Florida Poised to Send More Migrants North in Border-Policy Protest

Florida officials plan to continue transporting migrants to Northern states to protest federal border policies and might restart flights by December, according to a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis and emails from a contractor.

Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, has said the flights were intended to spread the burden of caring for migrants who enter the U.S. illegally to places where more officials support Biden administration immigration policies. Though Florida isn’t a border state, he has said the flights were needed because migrants travel there.

Mr. DeSantis’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, said the migrant transport campaign is still in place. Publicly released communications from Vertol Systems Co. Inc., the contractor that arranged the earlier flights, indicated more trips might occur later this year.

“While Florida has had all hands on deck responding to the catastrophic Hurricane Ian, the immigration relocation program remains active,” said Ms. Fenske. She didn’t comment on when the state might restart any flights.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said that migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard went voluntarily.

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Vertol Chief Executive James Montgomerie proposed in a letter to Florida’s transportation department earlier this month that his company arrange to transport about 100 migrants who entered the U.S. illegally to Delaware, Illinois or other states by Dec. 1, rather than a previously suggested date of Oct. 3.

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The letter, released as part of a public-records request, was sent shortly after Hurricane Ian caused billions of dollars of damage in Florida and killed at least 114 people. Florida has paid Vertol $950,000 for the proposed additional flights, on top of $615,000 for the flights to Massachusetts, according to state records.

Mr. Montgomerie didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Florida’s program is the most politically contentious of several Republican-led efforts to send migrants from border regions to states further north, though the Sunshine State has transported a fraction of the thousands who went on buses chartered by Texas and Arizona. Those policies started as a record number of people have been apprehended crossing the border illegally in the past year.

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Democrats and immigrant-rights groups have condemned Florida’s flights, calling them a political stunt, while Republicans and advocates for tighter border control say the flights have brought needed attention to the strains Southern states face from an influx of unauthorized migrants.

In late September, authorities in Delaware mobilized to potentially receive a flight of migrants at an airport near President Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach. Flight plans showed one of the aircraft that went to Martha’s Vineyard was scheduled to fly from San Antonio to Delaware, with a stop at the same small Florida airport where it briefly touched down on its way to Massachusetts. But no migrants arrived in Delaware.

Migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard say they were promised job and educational opportunities, their attorneys say.

Photo: cj gunther/Shutterstock

The migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, mostly from Venezuela, were told by recruiters that they were headed to Boston or Washington, D.C., and would receive jobs, housing, educational opportunities and other help at their destination, attorneys representing them said. Some of the migrants and Alianza Americas, an advocacy group for Latino immigrants, filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts against Mr. DeSantis and others claiming they were induced to travel by fraud and misrepresentation.

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Mr. DeSantis’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the allegations. The governor previously said that the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard weren’t duped or given false information and that they went there voluntarily. The aim of the relocation program, he has said, is to interdict migrants intending to go to Florida and to offer them free transportation to what he called “sanctuary jurisdictions.”

Most of the migrants have settled into communities around Massachusetts, their lawyers said, and a handful have returned to the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Lawyers for the migrants said they have been trying to learn more about a woman their clients say played a key role in recruiting them onto the Massachusetts-bound flights. Two of the migrants, speaking through immigration attorney Susan Church, identified the woman in photos posted on social-media accounts belonging to a person known as Perla Huerta.

Separately, a person who met Ms. Huerta identified her as someone who visited the Texas border in August with Florida officials and asked questions about the state’s migrant busing program.

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Ms. Huerta served in the Army for 20 years until August, according to records provided by the service. She rose to the rank of master sergeant, and served as a healthcare specialist and as a counterintelligence and human intelligence senior sergeant. She deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan and to Djibouti.

Ms. Huerta didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Florida’s program is funded by $12 million that the legislature set aside this year from interest earnings on federal coronavirus recovery funds. The budget language specified that the purpose was “to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law.”

The U.S. Treasury Department’s inspector general’s office is looking into whether coronavirus recovery funds can be used for immigration matters and what limitations apply to Florida’s use of the interest earned on those funds, according to a letter the office sent to Massachusetts lawmakers.

Florida Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo sued Mr. DeSantis and other state officials last month, alleging the flights to Martha’s Vineyard violated the terms of the appropriations bill .

Mr. DeSantis’s office criticized Mr. Pizzo after the lawsuit was filed for challenging an appropriation that he voted for. Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer who is also a defendant in the case, has filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, arguing in part that Mr. Pizzo lacks standing.

The sheriff’s office in Bexar County, Texas, which includes San Antonio, is conducting a criminal investigation into the flights and those who organized them. Sheriff Javier Salazar said his department had identified suspects but that he couldn’t release any names.

Last week, the Democrat submitted paperwork to the federal government certifying that the 49 migrants were victims of a crime and deserving of a visa reserved for such individuals. That would give them a chance to stay in the U.S. and eventually apply to become permanent residents.

—Alicia A. Caldwell and Ben Kesling contributed to this article.

Write to Jon Kamp at [email protected] and Arian Campo-Flores at [email protected]