FL Lege Allocates $12 Million For DeSantis To Kidnap More Migrants

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Yesterday, the supine Florida legislature passed SB1718, an anti-immigrant bill chock full of new and creative modes of state-sponsored cruelty and ways for Governor DeSantis to burnish his Republican bona fides for a presidential run.

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Want to make sure that sick and injured migrants don’t seek out medical care? They’ve got you covered.

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Each hospital that accepts Medicaid must include a provision on its patient admission or registration forms for the patient or the patient’s representative to state or indicate whether the patient is a United States citizen or lawfully present in the United States or is not lawfully present in the United States.

How about violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause to invalidate out of state driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants?

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If a driver license is of a class of licenses issued by another state exclusively to undocumented immigrants who are unable to prove lawful presence in the United States when the licenses are issued, the driver license, or other permit purporting to authorize the holder to operate a motor vehicle on public roadways, is invalid in this state and does not authorize the holder to operate a motor vehicle in this state.

Want to define any transport of undocumented migrants as “human smuggling?”

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A person who knowingly and willfully transports into this state an  individual whom who the person knows, or reasonably should know,  has entered the United States in violation of law and has not been inspected by the Federal Government since his or her unlawful entry from another country commits a felony of the third degree …

That part about smuggling only goes one way, of course. Because if the state of Florida does it, it’s called “unauthorized alien transport.”

For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the nonrecurring sum of $12 million from the General Revenue Fund is appropriated to the Division of Emergency Management within the Executive Office of the Governor for the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program.

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The legislature specifically allocated $12 million for DeSantis to charter flights to fly desperate migrants to places like Martha’s Vineyard and drop them there without warm clothes or even a warning to local authorities that they’re coming. But because Florida doesn’t share a land border with Mexico, it didn’t have enough migrants of its own. So instead DeSantis’s people paid a woman to recruit migrants in Texas with false promises of aid and jobs in Massachusetts.

From the New York Times:

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A woman named Perla, most of them said, had approached them in San Antonio about a free flight to Massachusetts.

There were jobs there, they were told, and people to help them. The woman provided the mostly destitute migrants with free meals at McDonald’s and a place to stay at a nearby La Quinta Inn before the flight.

The migrants each received a red folder containing a map of the United States, with an arrow stretching from Texas to Massachusetts. Another map in the shape of Martha’s Vineyard had a dot for the airport and one for the community services center.

Also in the folder was a brochure, apparently fake, titled “Refugee Migrant Benefits,” in English and Spanish. The cover proclaimed, “Massachusetts Welcomes You,” and featured a state flag that was not in fact the state flag. Listed on the back were the names and numbers of a church, a synagogue and a nonprofit on Martha’s Vineyard.

The pamphlet, reviewed by The Times, also promised “up to eight months of cash assistance” for “income-eligible” refugees in Massachusetts, apparently mimicking benefits offered to refugees who arrive in the United States through the country’s official resettlement program, which the Venezuelans were not part of.

And apparently the legislature looked at that and thought, “Time to plow another $12 million into kidnapping desperate migrants. Let’s go, Brandon!”

Florida, man … I don’t know.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Government, Immigration, Ron DeSantis