Immigration Policy in America

[pnwguy]

Sept 20, 2022 2:28:40 GMT Bact PhD said:

Things are about to get a LOT more interesting: The Bexar County (TX) Sheriff is VERY interested in what exactly went down in his jurisdiction:

www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/texas-sheriff-opens-criminal-investigation-marthas-vineyard-migrant-tr-rcna48411

A Texas sheriff said Monday that his office has opened a criminal investigation into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ unprecedented move to send nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said the inquiry was in its early stages, and he declined to name possible suspects. But in a news conference, he said: “Everybody on this call knows who those names are already.”

Salazar said it was not clear whether any laws had been broken, but he said that 48 migrants appeared to have been “lured under false pretenses” into staying at a hotel for a couple of days before they were flown to Florida and Martha’s Vineyard.

“They were promised work,” he said. “They were promised the solution to several of their problems.”

He said a recruiter was paid a "bird dog fee" to gather roughly 50 people around a San Antonio migrant resource center.

Ruh roh, Raggy!

My concern is that Abbott would do whatever possible to shut down a county-level investigation.  Sure there is occasional internecine warfare that breaks out in the Mafia.  But for the most part, they take care of their own.  Sure he'd like to see a rival get roasted.  But he's probably got dirty hands in this too.  

[Bact PhD]

A little bit more, including some choice words from the Supreme Emperor himself:

www.gainesville.com/story/news/2022/09/19/bexar-county-sheriff-investigate-migrant-flights-ron-desantis-javier-salazar/10431544002/

“Our understanding is that a Venezuelan migrant was paid what we would call a bird dog fee to recruit approximately 50 migrants from the area around a migrant Resource Center … in San Antonio,” Bexar County, Texas Sheriff Javier Salazar told reporters.

[snip]

Florida’s Republican governor has told reporters that he plans to continue paying the cost of transporting migrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas to keep them from settling in Florida and sending them to “sanctuary cities" around the country. He also said he wants to call attention to the Biden administration’s “reckless” border security policies.

Last Wednesday, without informing local officials in Texas or Massachusetts, DeSantis ordered the state to shuttle the migrants aboard two chartered airplanes from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard.

“I got $12 million to use, so we are going to use it,” he said. “Because I think people want to see that we're actually standing up and trying to protect the state against (President) Biden’s really, really reckless policies.”

The $12 million refers to money the Florida Legislature approved earlier this year to pay the cost of relocating undocumented immigrants in Florida. DeSantis paid $615,000 to Destin-based Vertol Systems, a transportation services company, through the Department of Transportation, which oversees the $12 million program to relocate "unauthorized aliens" from the state.

“We want to make sure that [Florida] taxpayers are not having tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people coming in illegally,” said DeSantis.

[snip]

DeSantis said his plan took shape last year when he took a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to help Abbott deal with the border crisis.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year at the Texas-Mexico border
DeSantis said he and his staff learned that 40% of migrants apprehended at the border expressed a desire to move to Florida. The governor explained it was more effective to intercept migrants at the border than it was to track them down when they arrived in Florida as individuals or in small groups.

“If they get in a car with two other people, there's no way we're going to be able to detect that,” said DeSantis.

So, said DeSantis, they hired a contractor to identify migrants likely headed to Florida and offer free transportation to “sanctuary jurisdictions.”

“And so they went from Texas to Florida, to Martha's Vineyard in the flight,” DeSantis said.

[LFC]

Sept 20, 2022 2:28:40 GMT Bact PhD said:

Things are about to get a LOT more interesting: The Bexar County (TX) Sheriff is VERY interested in what exactly went down in his jurisdiction:

Congratulations, Ronny. You managed to get the MSM's coverage off of immigration and onto human trafficking.

[pnwguy]

Sept 20, 2022 14:16:24 GMT LFC said:

Sept 20, 2022 2:28:40 GMT Bact PhD said:

Things are about to get a LOT more interesting: The Bexar County (TX) Sheriff is VERY interested in what exactly went down in his jurisdiction:

Congratulations, Ronny. You managed to get the MSM's coverage off of immigration and onto human trafficking.

Let's see how DeSatan explains it in Florida.  Cubans fleeing a socialist hellhole -- good!  Venezuelans fleeing a socialist hellhole -- dangerous and evil brown people!

[LFC]

A little bit about DeSatanist's human traffickers is beginning to gel.

So, according to DeSantis, Florida has “people” in Texas who are essentially polling migrants to see the percentage who want to come to Florida. Who are these “people”? DeSantis has refused to say. Based on their investigations, DeSantis’ “people” are then profiling migrants to decide who is likely to try to get to Florida and then jump in to offer them transportation to other places. Who? How many? Are these state employees? Where does the money for this come from?

During the same event, when asked about whether the migrants were deceived, DeSantis dropped another clue: “The folks that are contracted, not only do they give him a release form to sign, they actually give them a packet, and in that packet included a map of Martha’s Vineyard.”

Now we’re getting somewhere: “The folks that are contracted.” So they’re not government employees. The Florida legislature appropriated $12 million for transporting migrants out of Florida to blue states and cities. The appropriation said explicitly that it had to be removing immigrants from Florida — not from Texas. If you go by DeSantis’s statements his administration has contracted with private individuals, an organization or organizations in Texas to survey and surveil what we might call Florida-curious migrants in Texas. They are then paid to coax them on to planes destined to places like Martha’s Vineyard. This is almost certainly where “Perla” comes from. According to DeSantis, the state of Florida contracted with her or her organization to do this work in Texas. A private individual? A political organization? Who knows? But that’s certainly worth finding out.

Now let’s look at a different point.

The fact that the state of Florida is doing this work in Texas strongly suggests that this is not so much Florida hiring contractors to do work for the state of Florida as funding people who were perhaps already doing it or interested in doing it.

Why do I say this? Consider this.

The idea that Florida is trying to interdict Florida-curious migrants while they’re in Texas is absurd on its face. These transports are not meant to meaningfully reduce the number of asylum-seeking migrants in a particular state. A million migrants have been allowed into the country while awaiting asylum hearings since January 2021. If you’re chartering two jets to take 40 at a time to Massachusetts you’re going to be chartering quite a few jets before you make a dent in that number. This is true even for states like Texas which have been busing migrants at scale. The governors in question have actually been pretty clear about this. The buses and plans are meant to illustrate the migration pressure on border states and put pressure onto President Biden. Since that’s the aim, the idea you’d be hunting for Florida-curious migrants in Texas to ship them off before they go to Florida doesn’t really add up. Can it really be true that there aren’t a few dozen migrants in Florida waiting on asylum hearings?

Again, none of that makes sense. And that’s a clue.

Follow the money. Who did DeSatanist hire? Did that crew already exist? Are they politically funded? Have they violated the law in Texas before? And where did the money come from to pay them? DeSatanist can plead ignorance but the fact is that these are his contractors. The buck stops at him.

[LFC]

Here's a picture of one of the lying brochures, i.e. physical evidence, provided by the humans who were trafficked by DeSatanist's thugs. He should be ashamed. He's not, of course, because he's a psychopath but he should be.

In the aftermath of the flights, a key issue of contention is whether the migrants boarded the flights freely and voluntarily. While DeSantis and his administration repeatedly referred to the migrants as "illegal immigrants," the migrants surrendered to immigration officials after crossing the border into Texas. They are now seeking asylum from the repressive authoritarian regime in Venezuela. The migrants are legally permitted to remain in the United States while their cases are being considered by immigration courts.

So these migrants are able to voluntarily travel within the United States. But many of the migrants told reporters that they were misled about the nature of the flights. Several migrants told NPR they were told the flight was going to Boston, not Martha's Vineyard. According to the migrants, a woman who identified herself as Perla also said that, if they traveled to Boston, they could receive "expedited work papers."

The allegation that the migrants were misled is legally significant. It would mean that the flights were not just heartless, but potentially criminal. If the migrants were misled, the scheme to transport them to Martha's Vineyard could constitute fraud, false imprisonment, or kidnapping. "There is absolutely the possibility of both civil and criminal liability if people were lied to about where they were going [or] what they were going to get when they got there," lawyer Susan Church told Politico.

DeSantis has been adamant that the migrants were not misled. He claims that migrants were provided with a map showing the destination was Martha's Vineyard and describes the flights as "all voluntary." Appearing on Fox News on Sunday Morning, Florida Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez (R) called allegations that the migrants were misled "categorically false."

Popular Information, however, has obtained a brochure that was provided to the migrants who ultimately agreed to the flights. It was provided to Popular Information by Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based legal organization that represents 30 of the migrants. The brochure says that migrants who arrive in Massachusetts will be eligible for numerous benefits, including "8 months cash assistance," "assistance with housing," "food," "clothing," "transportation to job interviews," "job training," "job placement," "registering children for school," "assistance applying for Social Security cards," and many other benefits.

None of this, however, is true.

[LFC]

Wow, DeSatanist's latest explanation of why he engaged in human trafficking is becoming Palinesque in its stupidity (paywalled). He's desperate to change the topic now that the whole thing is waaayyyy off message.

This new video of Ron DeSantis’s 10th explanation of who he was funding in Texas really has to be seen to be believed. (Video below.) He says that he can’t ship migrants from Florida, as the state legislature authorized money to do, because there aren’t enough migrants coming into the state. There’s no “mass movement.” It’s just one or two people at a time driving to Florida. There’s no way to deal with that efficiently because there aren’t enough people. (Needless to say, however people are entering the state, if the state is overrun you just pick them up locally.) But, he says, he has “intelligence” operatives in Texas and they have learned that from “30% to 40%” of migrants in Texas intend to come to Florida.

In other words, there’s a tidal wave of people apparently about to come. Just not yet. Follow? Good.

So what to do? The most efficient way to deal with this is to go to Texas, profile people who seem likely to later come to Florida and fly them to states run by Democrats. That means “the chance they end up in Florida is much less.”

I guess if you want to be really, really generous you might say that people might be less willing to get bamboozled into being flown north if they’re already in Florida where they want to be as opposed to in Texas. But I think it goes without saying that the cost and inefficiency of the DeSantis plan is great enough to eliminate any benefit. And also: if you hoodwink migrants into going to Boston they can also just get on a bus to go to Florida. San Antonio to Miami is almost as far as Boston to Miami.

The barbarity of DeSantis’s actions should not obscure the hilarity of what is clearly an after-the-fact explanation of what happened and why. We can be pretty confident that the reason he’s resorting to this explanation is because he really, really doesn’t want to discuss who he’s working with in Texas. What individuals? What activist groups? Again, the explanation is absurd on its face. There’s no mass migration of migrants into Florida. So to move them at scale you need to get them in Texas and send them north. So they don’t end up in Florida.

Here’s the video.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 21, 2022 15:03:55 GMT LFC said:

Wow, DeSatanist's latest explanation of why he engaged in human trafficking is becoming Palinesque in its stupidity (paywalled). He's desperate to change the topic now that the whole thing is waaayyyy off message.

This new video of Ron DeSantis’s 10th explanation of who he was funding in Texas really has to be seen to be believed. (Video below.) He says that he can’t ship migrants from Florida, as the state legislature authorized money to do, because there aren’t enough migrants coming into the state. There’s no “mass movement.” It’s just one or two people at a time driving to Florida. There’s no way to deal with that efficiently because there aren’t enough people. (Needless to say, however people are entering the state, if the state is overrun you just pick them up locally.) But, he says, he has “intelligence” operatives in Texas and they have learned that from “30% to 40%” of migrants in Texas intend to come to Florida.

In other words, there’s a tidal wave of people apparently about to come. Just not yet. Follow? Good.

So what to do? The most efficient way to deal with this is to go to Texas, profile people who seem likely to later come to Florida and fly them to states run by Democrats. That means “the chance they end up in Florida is much less.”

I guess if you want to be really, really generous you might say that people might be less willing to get bamboozled into being flown north if they’re already in Florida where they want to be as opposed to in Texas. But I think it goes without saying that the cost and inefficiency of the DeSantis plan is great enough to eliminate any benefit. And also: if you hoodwink migrants into going to Boston they can also just get on a bus to go to Florida. San Antonio to Miami is almost as far as Boston to Miami.

The barbarity of DeSantis’s actions should not obscure the hilarity of what is clearly an after-the-fact explanation of what happened and why. We can be pretty confident that the reason he’s resorting to this explanation is because he really, really doesn’t want to discuss who he’s working with in Texas. What individuals? What activist groups? Again, the explanation is absurd on its face. There’s no mass migration of migrants into Florida. So to move them at scale you need to get them in Texas and send them north. So they don’t end up in Florida.

Here’s the video.

How's a guy to score political points on immigration if the illegal immigrants don't come to his state?  I used to think this dude was smart (compared to Trump he might be) but it seems that he simply has the feral instinct to provoke fights so he can be elevated in right wing media.

[LFC]

Raise your hand if you're surprised. Anybody? Didn't think so.

A Texas sheriff announced Monday that he would investigate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration flying Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last week.

And now, his office says, it’s received “numerous threats.”

[pnwguy]

From a lifelong conservative at The Bulwark.

Remember when there were sensible Republicans, on ANY topic?

www.thebulwark.com/dont-blame-the-immigrants-its-our-laws-that-are-criminal/

[Bact PhD]

Sept 21, 2022 16:25:50 GMT goldenvalley said:

Sept 21, 2022 15:03:55 GMT LFC said:

Wow, DeSatanist's latest explanation of why he engaged in human trafficking is becoming Palinesque in its stupidity. …He's desperate to change the topic now that the whole thing is waaayyyy off message.

How's a guy to score political points on immigration if the illegal immigrants don't come to his state?  I used to think this dude was smart (compared to Trump he might be) but it seems that he simply has the feral instinct to provoke fights so he can be elevated in right wing media.

And to think he seemed relatively sane (by 2018 standards) when he was first elected, even during the first few months he was in office. The revelation of the “feral instinct” (an apt term) during 2020 plays very well in RW media. The trouble is, there’s only so much “Can You Top This” that can be carried out before lines are crossed.

[LFC]

Sept 21, 2022 17:51:23 GMT pnwguy said:

From a lifelong conservative at The Bulwark.

Remember when there were sensible Republicans, on ANY topic?

But how can he be anything but a RINO when he fails to mention that the people he is advocating be allowed to immigrate to America aren't white?

[LFC]

DeSatanist's coyote had another flight set up (paywalled) which was scrubbed after it was leaked. "Perla" scrambled to dump the immigrants back in Texas, some stranded without transportation. I guess if you can't achieve your political stunt you at least get a win for f***ing with some desperate people who are trying not to be murdered in their own country.

“Perla” Behind Another Flight and Stranded Migrants

There was a scramble at Delaware Coastal Airport near Georgetown, Delware Tuesday as state authorities and immigrant support organizations rushed to be ready to receive a plane filled with migrants from Texas. The DeSantis administration leaked word to reporters in Florida about the flight. There was no official word from anyone in Delaware but rumors abounded that such a flight was on its way from Texas and would arrive by 1:30 PM. But the plane never showed. Courtesy of TPM Reader DC we have a report on the commotion here. Later, DeSantis spokesperson Christine Pushaw tweeted that the whole flight rumor was “disinformation.” But it wasn’t. Venezuelan migrants in San Antonio had been recruited. A charter flight had been booked.

Now from the Miami Herald, in a richly reported piece, we get the other side of the story in San Antonio. There was a planned flight. It was all real and organized by the same operatives as the Martha’s Vineyard stunt. There was another group of Venezuelan migrants at another La Quinta motel waiting for the flight. They had been recruited by the same as yet unidentified dark-haired woman who had helped recruit the 50-odd migrants shipped to Martha’s Vineyard last week. Their hotel rooms while waiting for the flight that never happened were booked by “Perla”, according to Bexar County Sheriff’s investigators who spoke to the Herald. (“Perla” is apparently a tall blonde.) The two said they were working for an “organization” they couldn’t disclose and told the migrants their transport and the benefits that awaited them were contingent on keeping all their actions and the whole plan secret.

Once the Delaware flight was called off a bus dumped the migrants back at the San Antonio migrant resource center they’d been recruited from days earlier. Some who missed the bus were stranded at the La Quinta Inn ten miles away with no transportation to get back.

The Herald story implies that the flight was called off as a way to punk reporters and the locals waiting for the flight in Delaware. And that is very possible. The Herald article is really a great piece of reporting. But it seems to me there’s another explanation. This happened Tuesday, by which time a host of legal entanglements – as well as more aggressive reporting – were already emerging about the Martha’s Vineyard flights. Perhaps that’s why it was called off? This is just a hunch. The Herald reporters are there on the ground in San Antonio. But that seems to me like a more likely explanation.

[Bact PhD]

Sept 18, 2022 18:02:15 GMT LFC said:

Josh Marshall says that none of DeSatanist's moves make sense. I suspect the identity of a key, wealthy player missing.

You called it!

www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/florida-migrant-moving-company-gave-gop-cash-ties-desantis-immigration-rcna48967

The air charter company Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration hired for his migrant-moving program has contributed big money to some top allies of the governor and was once legally represented by Rep. Matt Gaetz and his former partner, who is now Florida's “public safety czar” in charge of immigration policy.

DeSantis’ administration has refused to release a copy of the $12 million contract with Vertol Systems Company Inc. for its role in administering the “unauthorized alien” program — which state Democrats sought to block with a lawsuit Thursday — nor will the governor’s office comment on the nearly $1.6 million the company has received to send migrants to so-called sanctuary cities that welcome immigrants.

[snip]

In Vertol's only known case of relocating migrants, the company received an initial $615,000 last week and recruited almost 50 destitute asylum-seeking Venezuelan migrants in San Antonio, gave them food and at least one night’s hotel stay, and then flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of DeSantis’ effort to highlight the toll of illegal immigration. Lawyers for the migrants say they were tricked by false promises and are suing.

And in a classic case of “I didn’t really mean what I said about transparency”:

The DeSantis administration's refusal to provide public records about the contract contrasts with his pledge to operate government with "the utmost transparency and accountability" before taking office in 2019, when he also said he would "drain the swamp" in Tallahassee and stop the "dominance" of special interests.

“The state is completely violating the law. They haven’t provided any scintilla of evidence for how this is legal,” said state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat who is leading the lawsuit to block payments to the company.

[pnwguy]

Sept 22, 2022 23:55:42 GMT @admin said:

"They haven’t provided any scintilla of evidence for how this is legal,” said state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat who is leading the lawsuit to block payments to the company

If a Republican says something is legal, it's legal.  That's their new definition of law in MAGAstan.

[LFC]

Pete Buttigieg chews up DeSatanist and his human trafficking.

[pnwguy]

Sept 26, 2022 22:27:42 GMT LFC said:

Pete Buttigieg chews up DeSatanist and his human trafficking.

There is no better surgeon in the Democratic Party that Pete.  He could cut a Republican's ball off without them knowing it, if any of them besides Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger had any.

[LFC]

More drips and drabs are coming out about Ron DeSatanist's human trafficking operation (paywalled). Of course Mr. Transparency (or so he claimed when he ran for governor) is avoiding giving any answers.

The Post has another updated narrative of the events surrounding Florida’s shipment of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. It is mainly more human detail about the journey of one Venezuelan migrant named Jose. But it does give a bit more flavor or “Perla’s” MO, including offering McDonald’s voucher to migrants who’d gone without food in exchange for signing a transport waiver most of which hadn’t been translated into Spanish. The other thing that is clear is that reporters seem to have more detail than made it into this article about the contracting arrangements by which Florida paid for these operatives in Texas to run their operation for them.

Another detail, which has been noted in other publications, is that Vertol Systems, the helicopter charter company which Florida chose to run the program was paid just over $1.5 million around the time of the Martha’s Vineyard flight and another aborted trip to Delaware. The article implies that this was for that work, though they say there’s no way to confirm that it was specifically for that trip.

I don’t think we can assume that since it’s supposed to be an on-going program and it could be for various operations, some of which haven’t happened yet and others which are non-public. So I don’t think that is a safe assumption. But the refusal of all the relevant parties to answer any questions about the operations, the personnel or the money I think tells us plenty about the overall situation and how bad the details may be.

[LFC]

Dems send a letter to Buttigieg that basically asks if he can kick DeSatanist's ass along with the ass of anybody else involved with luring immigrants across state lines on a jet with false promises.

I'd like to see if he can threaten their certification to fly. Maybe we could get a few straight answers if they thought they'd be grounded for a few months.

[LFC]

They have now identified DeSatantist's lead human trafficker. She's very, very recently ex-military.

So we know who Perla is. She’s Perla Huerta, a former combat medic and Army counterintelligence agent who was discharged from the Army only last month after two decades in the Army. The news comes from an article in The New York Times. But the information appears to come out of the investigation being conducted by the Bexar County (San Antonio) Sheriff’s department which announced a criminal probe just days after the story broke. The Times as well as lawyers working with the Venezuelan migrants in Massachusetts showed pictures of Huerta to several migrants who had either worked with Huerta or been hustled by her and shipped to Martha’s Vineyard. All apparently confirmed that Huerta was the “Perla” at the center of the operation.

According to the Times, Huerta lives in Tampa. But she did not respond to multiple efforts to contact her. That identification is the key bit of information in the Times article. If you’ve been following the story closely, you’ll know most of the other information.

One additional detail which would confirms earlier suspicions, the operation appears to have been driven by the fact that DeSantis asked for $12 million to ship migrants who were purportedly being transported to Florida. But not enough were showing up to sustain DeSantis’s effort. So they decided to go to Texas where there were more migrants available to trick.

A basic question: how did a woman who was apparently only weeks out of a 20 year career as an active duty member of the US Army get involved in this? Her apparent background as Army counterintelligence with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan might be just a random coincidence. But maybe not? It’s the kind of background you might want running an operation like this. Notably, she also appeared to be looking specifically for Venezuelan immigrants to hoodwinked as part of the mission she had in Texas.

Weirder and weirder.

[LFC]

So where exactly did the money for DeSatanist's human trafficking come from?

The Treasury Department is now investigating whether the taxpayer money Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) spent to fly Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard for political theater last month came from federal COVID-19 relief.

Richard Delmar, the department’s deputy inspector general, sent a letter to a congressional delegation of Massachusetts lawmakers on Friday saying that his office was reviewing Florida’s use of the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) that was established by the American Rescue Plan.

“We will review the allowability of use of SLFRF funds related to immigration generally, and will specifically confirm whether interest earned on SLFRF was utilized by Florida related to immigration activities, and if so, what conditions and limitations apply to such use,” Delmar wrote.

The Treasury official said the department planned to “get this work underway as quickly as possible.”

Isn't the use of federal money in commission of a crime a rather serious offense? Not that I expect anything to happen because it rarely does but c'mon, what does it take for the justice system in America to take political crime seriously?

[LFC]

Smooth move, Ex-Lax DeSatanist.

David Alpert
@alpert
Brilliant turnabout

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Texas law enforcement has certified that the migrants whom Ron DeSantis trafficked to Martha's Vineyard are victims of a crime—potentially qualifying them for a U-visa, which would allow them to stay in the U.S. for four years and apply for a green card in three years.

[LFC]

Another investigation is starting into DeSatanists' human trafficking.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has opened an investigation into whether southern border state governors misled immigrants as part of what he called a “political stunt” to transport them to Washington.

Racine told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune his office is examining whether immigrants were deceived by trip organizers before boarding buses for Washington, including several hundred who were bused from Texas under instructions from Gov. Greg Abbott and dropped near the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris. Racine’s office has the authority to bring misdemeanor criminal charges or to file civil fraud cases.

Racine said that in interviews with his investigators, arriving immigrants “have talked persuasively about being misled, with talk about promised services.” He offered no specifics about the inquiry, including whether it is being handled by his office’s criminal or civil divisions. The attorney general’s office declined to answer further questions.

Various state and federal laws could apply to transporting immigrants across state lines. Racine’s office could look into whether anyone committed fraud by falsely promising jobs or services, whether there were civil rights violations or whether officials misused taxpayers’ money.

[goldenvalley]

Oct 14, 2022 21:58:30 GMT LFC said:

Another investigation is starting into DeSatanists' human trafficking.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has opened an investigation into whether southern border state governors misled immigrants as part of what he called a “political stunt” to transport them to Washington.

Racine told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune his office is examining whether immigrants were deceived by trip organizers before boarding buses for Washington, including several hundred who were bused from Texas under instructions from Gov. Greg Abbott and dropped near the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris. Racine’s office has the authority to bring misdemeanor criminal charges or to file civil fraud cases.

Racine said that in interviews with his investigators, arriving immigrants “have talked persuasively about being misled, with talk about promised services.” He offered no specifics about the inquiry, including whether it is being handled by his office’s criminal or civil divisions. The attorney general’s office declined to answer further questions.

Various state and federal laws could apply to transporting immigrants across state lines. Racine’s office could look into whether anyone committed fraud by falsely promising jobs or services, whether there were civil rights violations or whether officials misused taxpayers’ money.

Good.  A political stunt is one thing, morally repugnant yes.  Using taxpayer dollars to carry it out is another and one that is actionable in court.

[LFC]

More details are coming out on human trafficker Ron DeSatanist's program. In full due to paywall.

The Miami Herald has another richly reported article on the migrant bamboozling operation Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ran in San Antonio, Texas — the one that left 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard and spawned an on-going criminal investigation in Bexar County, Texas. The article is paywalled. So if you’re a subscriber give it a read. If not I want to summarize a few key new pieces of information, drawn mainly from public documents the DeSantis administration has been compelled to divulged under Florida’s sunshine law as well as on-the-ground reporting from the Herald.

The key detail is this: Perla Huerta, the woman running the recruitment operation in San Antonio, is an employee of Vertol systems, the military contractor the DeSantis administration hired to run its flights. Huerta was only weeks out of the Army, in which she had served for 20 years. The DeSantis operation was apparently her first assignment working for Vertol. There were several other Vertol employees, most or all retired military, also overseeing the operation in Houston. At Vertol the operation was overseen by top executive Candice Wahowski, an Air Force veteran who had been a military police officer in the Air Force. Wahoswki was also on location in San Antonio. Many of the migrants recruited in San Antonio had met with her.

Much of the article is based on the story of “Emmanuel,” another Venezuelan migrant Huerta hired to help her recruit. In one of the many telling details, she paid him in cash in what amounted to dead drops — money stashed behind dumpsters which he was to retrieve as his compensation.

“The money is going to be in the Bill Miller [restaurant] near your house. It’s going to be behind the dumpster outside in a white envelope.”

Around the whole operation there was a climate of secrecy enforced by Vertol — no recording devices that could capture the voices or images of Vertol employees and so forth. Former employees said the whole company is tinged by an air of paranoia and secrecy. It was this which warned some of the migrants off, fearing that they were being snared in some kind of government operation, which of course was precisely what was happening.

In a notable irony, as Perla and her crew quickly closed down their operation as the flights became a national story, they had a plane ticket to Florida for Emmanuel to get him out of town ahead of any investigation. In other words, the state of Florida ended up footing the bill for Venezuelan asylum seeker Emmanuel’s flight to Florida, the kind of Texas-to-Florida trip DeSantis’s operation was notionally aimed at preventing. A short time later Emmanuel returned to Texas to cooperate with the Bexar County sheriff’s ongoing investigation.