‘Just plain wrong’: White House condemns migrant flight to Martha’s Vineyard
A group of migrants flown by Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis unannounced from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard will begin moving from the island to a shelter supproted by state agencies in Cape Cod.
Agencies are “coordinating efforts among state and local officials to ensure access to food, shelter and essential services for these men, women and children,” according to Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s office.
The governor also plans to activate up to 125 members of the Massachusetts National Guard.
Mr DeSantis reportedly told a roomful of GOP donors at a fundraising event about his plans days before the island would receive 50 migrants, including families with children, most of whom initially fled Venezuela.
The White House has condemned the governor’s “deeply alarming” stunt, and immigration advocates and attorneys have suggested that the governor facilitated their kidnapping. Officials are calling on the US Department of Justice to investigate.
Federal officials are reportedly expected to discuss “litigation options” in response.
Migrant families are being offered move to Cape Code shelter, state lawmaker reports
State Rep Dylan Fernandes, who represents Martha’s Vineyard at the state House, reports that families are being offered a move to the newly announced shelter at Cape Code.
Alex Woodward16 September 2022 16:30
‘Playing politics with human beings’: Biden slams GOP governors’ migrant flights
Speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala on Thursday night, Joe Biden slammed GOP governors less than a day after Greg Abbott sent two busloads of South and Central American asylum seekers to Washington and Ron DeSantis funded a planeload of migrants’ transportation from Texas to Massachusetts.
“Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” Biden said.
The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg on White House reaction:
Biden slams GOP governors’ migrant flights: ‘Playing politics with human beings’
‘The children … deserve better than being left on the streets of DC or being left in Martha’s Vineyard’
Alex Woodward16 September 2022 16:15
Republicans sent migrants to Martha’s Vineyard to stoke panic. Instead, residents reacted with kindness
The arrival of 50 migrants on Martha’s Vineyard – known as a summer getaway for wealthier Americans with a relatively small, tight-knit community of permanent residents – has galvanised communities across the island off the coast of Massachusetts, providing immediate shelter and relief for a group of people and families deceptively collected into planes out of Texas, more than 2,000 miles away, at taxpayers’ expense.
The effort, of course, intends to paint the perceived liberal elitism on the nation’s East Coast as hypocritical, in protest of what the American right characterises as an “open border” that facilities “illegal” immigration into the US, while casting President Biden as responsible for the cruelty on the southern side of the US-Mexico border because he has invited migrants to it.
But advocacy groups and attorneys have criticised the administration not because it allegedly invites migrants into the US but because of a byzantine process to seek aslyum or legal entry, with thousands of people denied from having their cases heard.
Republican governors “manufacture chaos” and ignore asylum seekers in a broken immigration system, advocates tell The Independent’s Alex Woodward:
A ‘depraved’ stunt reveals the GOP’s self-created migrant crisis, advocates say
The arrival of 50 migrants galvanised communities on the island while Republican governors ‘manufacture chaos’ and ignore asylum seekers in a broken immigration system, advocates tell Alex Woodward
Alex Woodward16 September 2022 15:45