WASHINGTON — Have San Antonio authorities handed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a political gift at the outset of his presidential campaign?
The Bexar County prosecutor’s office said Tuesday it is reviewing the sheriff’s recommendation to press charges over the flights DeSantis arranged last summer, delivering migrants from San Antonio to the resort island of Martha’s Vineyard with promises that jobs and homes awaited them.
“I can only imagine that DeSantis would flaunt this as a badge of honor,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.
Authorities in Massachusetts got no heads-up about the flights, which boosted DeSantis’ stature as a Republican willing to troll Democrats and capable of thrilling conservatives — on one of ex-president Donald Trump’s signature issues.
For migrant advocates, it was no lighthearted incident.
“Vulnerable human beings are being hunted in America by government officials wanting to score cheap political points. Charges must be filed,” tweeted Rachel Self, an immigration lawyer who represents many of the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, who had also denounced the migrant flights, likewise lauded the recommendation of criminal charges.
“Governor DeSantis used fraud and deception to lure vulnerable people from San Antonio and dump them in a remote island community that scrambled to care for them. This was human trafficking — and the people who perpetrated this crime must be held responsible,” the congressman wrote on Twitter.
Aides to DeSantis, at his campaign and the governor’s office, did not respond to requests for comment.
Since jumping into the 2024 contest, DeSantis has cast Trump as a big talker with little to show for his bluster, trying to out-Trump him as a hardliner on border security and immigration.
“I’ve heard a lot of promises about taking care of border security for years and years and years,” the governor told New Hampshire Republicans last Thursday in Manchester. “When I’m president, we will be the one to finally bring this issue to a conclusion.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was the first GOP governor to use interstate transportation of migrants as a pressure tactic. He started by sending busloads of recently arrived asylum seekers to Washington, dropping them near the U.S. Capitol and then, as an escalation, at the gates of Vice President Kamala Harris’s official residence.
The flights have continued since DeSantis joined the 2024 contest last week.
Over the weekend, two flights carrying migrants from El Paso landed in Sacramento, Calif., again without any heads-up to local authorities or volunteer groups.
Paperwork carried by the migrants indicated the involvement of the same company the state of Florida had hired for the San Antonio-Martha’s Vineyard flights.
California’s attorney general said he would explore criminal charges. Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, seethed at DeSantis on social media, calling his fellow governor “you small, pathetic man. This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?”
Around the same time Monday, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar’s office said it had completed its investigation into the September flights and filed a criminal complaint seeking prosecution for “unlawful restraint.”
“Several accounts were filed, both misdemeanor and felony,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bexar County Criminal District Attorney Joe Gonzales said Tuesday the complaint “will undergo our normal and meticulous intake review” to determine if a felony was committed. If so, he said, “we will present that case to a grand jury for their deliberation.”
The sheriff hasn’t identified suspects but has said he’s only focused on people who had direct contact with the migrants.
That excludes DeSantis but not his top public safety aide, who flew on one of the planes, and his chief of staff, who coordinated the operation.
One likely target would be the woman migrants knew as Perla, who’d chatted them up at the city’s Migrant Resource Center. They’ve since said she lied about promises of work, housing and help with asylum claims to persuade them to fly to a place they’d never heard of, where no such resources awaited.
She has since been identified as Perla Huerta, a former San Antonio resident.
The Florida Legislature authorized up to $12 million in last year’s budget to relocate migrants out of the Sunshine State, using interest on unspent federal COVID-19 relief funds. Democrats in Tallahassee say the program isn’t just bad policy, it was misapplied to move migrants from Texas.
State lawmakers expanded the “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program,” adding $10 million.
Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of migrants it says were “duped into flying to Martha’s Vineyard,” denounced the latest flights to Sacramento, describing all as part of a “shameful practice of using vulnerable people as political pawns.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens commended the sheriff for seeking prosecution. Dallas-based national president Domingo Garcia also called for a federal investigation.
“Abandoned at the doorstep of Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Washington, DC residence and on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, these vulnerable individuals found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, deceived and discarded,” he said.
But the critics are not the intended audience for DeSantis, who’s made border security a central campaign theme.
He’s also adopted signature Trump promises as his own.
“We are going to shut the border down. We’re going to build a border wall,” the governor said Friday in Lexington, S.C.
“You cannot have a normal functioning society if you do not have control over the territorial integrity of your country,” he told Iowans last week in Council Bluffs.
That’s a variation on Trump’s oft-uttered assertion that “If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country.”
Starlyn Perdue, chair of the Pottawattamie County Republican Party in Council Bluffs, said she needs to stay neutral and declined to weigh in on the migrant flights or possible charges. But she readily affirmed that Iowa Republicans want to hear plans to curb unlawful migration.
“What’s going on at the border right now is a major issue that needs to be addressed nationally,” she said.