Eight days before last month’s announcement that he’s running for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a series of bills that he said would fight human trafficking in his state. He also released a statement arguing that “Biden’s Border Crisis” is “exacerbating human trafficking across the nation.”
Before last month’s announcement that he’s running for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a series of bills that he said would fight human trafficking in his state.
But officials in Texas and California and civil rights attorneys in Massachusetts are essentially accusing DeSantis of engaging in human trafficking himself. Last September, his administration ordered two planes to carry 49 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard. Then, the professed opponent of human trafficking did it again this month, when his administration arranged the flights that carried migrants from Texas to Sacramento, California.
What are those flights if not a state-sanctioned human trafficking operation, one that operates by feigning empathy for migrants, promising them help only to exploit them for crass political profit?
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in Texas announced the recommendation of criminal charges for the Martha Vineyard’s flights. In an interview with Jacob Soboroff on NBC’s “TODAY” show that aired Thursday morning, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the Sacramento flights were criminal and his state will investigate. The Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), had already filed a class-action lawsuit against DeSantis, other Florida officials and the vendor contracted by the state to manage the flights to Martha’s Vineyard. The group just sent lawyers to Sacramento to investigate if the flights that landed there have any bearing on that ongoing case.
“This is a class-action suit filed on behalf of all immigrants who are induced to travel across state lines…
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