The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is again under the eye of the courts after he was sued by one of the most important immigrant defense organizations.
The Southern Poverty Law Centerbased in Montgomery, Alabama, has sued him for deporting recently arrived immigrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on a series of flights of dubious legality.
The activist center has a track record of success in lawsuits for the defense of immigrants, since it usually surrounds itself with the best and most experienced American lawyers.
“Racism towards Latino immigrants may have reached a new high point, as some governors now bus and fly them to other states as political packages to blame Democrats for the presence of immigrants in the country,” said the president. Center in the documentation delivered to the court.
Strong reaction in South Florida to sending immigrants to other states by Governor DeSantis
Since April thousands of asylum seekers, mainly from Venezuela, where the 2014 economic collapse triggered a humanitarian crisis, have been transported to cities in the northern United States by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona.
“In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis did the same thing recently. Under a $12 million program created to address needs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, DeSantis used part of those federal funds to transport asylum seekers out of state, taking them first to Florida from Texas and then to Florida. Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts,” the document added.
For the activists’ lawyers, the fraud is clear. “Governor DeSantis and the State of Florida’s scheme to use taxpayer funds for the ‘relocation’ of ‘unauthorized aliens’ is a brazen and illegal attempt to harass immigrants at the state level,” said Paul R. Chavez , lead attorney. “Florida’s relocation program constitutes a discriminatory attack against immigrant communities. Governor DeSantis’ unconstitutional actions must be stopped,” he added.
The plaintiffs, which include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, filed their case Thursday on behalf of three groups in federal court in Miami. The action against DeSantis and the state’s Secretary of Transportation contends that the Florida program, which led the DeSantis administration to airlift nearly 50 migrants, is unconstitutional because the state is, they say, “usurping the exclusive role of the Federal Government in regulate and enforce immigration law.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the program is discriminatory and constitutes “state-sponsored harassment of immigrants on the basis of race, color, and national origin.”
Florida Governor Expels Undocumented Immigrants to Massachusetts
“The Constitution is clear: the sole and exclusive power to regulate immigration policy is granted to the Federal Government, not to the states,” Chávez emphasized.
DeSantis said he organized the relocation of immigrants to draw attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He affirmed that the migrants joined voluntarily.
Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ director of communications, said in a statement Friday afternoon that the program was “lawfully executed under an assignment from the Florida state legislature (which had bipartisan support, by the way). This program does not violate federal law. We will continue to defend the state’s actions against these unsound and politically motivated lawsuits.”
But the flights sparked a backlash from Democrats and other actors. The Treasury Department’s watchdog is investigating whether the governor misused money related to federal COVID-19 relief to pay for the flights.
A sheriff in Texas is also investigating them.
