"Yes, Florida can confirm the two planes with illegal immigrants that arrived in Martha's Vineyard today were part of the state's relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations," Taryn Fenske, communications director for Governor Ron DeSantis, told Fox News Digital.

[...]

"Martha's Vineyard residents should be thrilled about this. They vote for sanctuary cities - they get a sanctuary city of their own. And illegal aliens will increase the town's diversity, which is strength. Right?," Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for DeSantis' reelection campaign, said on Twitter.

On Monday morning, Popular Information broke the news that migrants from Venezuela were provided with false information to convince them to board flights chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ®. A brochure distributed to migrants says that they will be eligible for numerous benefits in Massachusetts, including "8 months cash assistance," "assistance with housing," "food," "clothing," "job placement," "registering children for school," and many other benefits.

None of this is true. The benefits described in the brochure are resettlement benefits available to refugees who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and authorized to live in the United States. These benefits are not available in Massachusetts to the migrants who boarded the flights, who are still in the process of seeking asylum.

[...]

Late Monday, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, which represents the area in Texas where the migrants were recruited for the flight to Massachusetts, announced he had launched a criminal investigation into DeSantis' scheme. Salazar said that migrants "were 'hoodwinked' with promises of jobs and other benefits to the flight to Massachusetts." According to Salazar, there is "a high probability that laws were broken."

Venezuelan migrants flown to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his transportation secretary Tuesday for engaging in a “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme” to relocate them.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, alleges that the migrants were told they were going to Boston or Washington, “which was completely false," and were induced with perks such as $10 McDonald's gift certificates.

[...]

The lawsuit, which also names Secretary of Transportation Jared W. Perdue as a defendant, alleges that migrants were induced to cross state lines under false pretenses, a line that some Democratic officials are using to urge a federal investigation.

In the early 1960s, another group of white supremacists, relying on the same racism-and-spite blueprint, and peddling the same lies about housing and opportunity, bussed vulnerable people—Black Americans living in the Jim Crow-era South—across the Mason-Dixon line to get back at Northern liberals involved in the civil rights movement. The Reverse Freedom Rides were a racist prank in the same mean-spirited, pitiless vein we’re seeing from MAGA immigration hardliners. And while Abbott has boasted that his “unprecedented” bussing plan is doing “what no state has done in American history to secure our border,” it’s hard to believe he hasn’t cribbed every note from those racist originators.