BOSTON (WHDH) – A group of Massachusetts lawmakers is urging in a letter for the Department of Transportation to prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from being transported under false pretenses after nearly 50 migrants were surprised to end up on a flight to Martha’s Vineyard.
The lawmakers include Democrats Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Reps. Bill Keating (MA-09), Lori Trahan (MA-03), Stephen F. Lynch (MA-08), Jake Auchincloss (MA-04), and Seth Moulton (MA-06). The group addressed the letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
According to a civil suit filed by the migrants on Sept. 20, the group of Venezuelan migrants in Texas was lured by “false promises and false representations” about the job, educational and housing opportunities available to them at their destination. The flights ordered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were paid for from Florida’s $12 million taxpayer-funded “relocation program.”
The letter alleges that the flight may have violated DOT’s Charter-Broker Rule, issued by former President Donald Trump in 2018, which stipulates that people or entities who arrange charter air transportation are prohibited from misrepresenting “the time of departure or arrival, points served, route to be flown, stops to be made, or total trip-time from point of departure to destination,” according to the rule.
“The Department should use all tools within its authority… to ensure that migrants are not transported under false pretenses as part of a competition among wannabe Trump acolytes to claim the mantle of cruelest governor in the United States,” the group wrote in the letter. “Charter brokers and air carriers should not assist states like Florida in relocating migrants with false promises about their ultimate destination.”
The letter notes that Vertol Systems Company, Inc. signed a $1.6 million contract with the State of Florida to relocate the asylum seekers, then hired a charter company to fly the planes.
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