CNN –
The roughly 50 migrants Florida’s governor airlifted to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts this week were flown to a military base Friday for shelter and humanitarian support, officials said.
The migrants, after two days of uncertainty on the tiny island and a major local effort to resupply them, cheered Friday morning when they were told they would be taken to Joint Base Cape Cod.
The migrants had been moved from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday in deals made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, part of a series of moves by Republican governors to transport migrants to liberal enclaves to protest inadequate federal security efforts the southern border .
Martha’s Vineyard did not expect the group, and DeSantis’ move was harshly denounced by the White House, migrant advocates and Democratic officials.
At a church where they had been staying on Martha’s Vineyard, migrants cheered Friday morning when they heard the Massachusetts government would shelter them at the military base on Cape Cod. They boarded government-arranged buses willingly, officials said, and arrived at the military installation Friday afternoon.
Joint Base Cape Cod, which is already a designated emergency shelter by the state emergency management agency, is set up to provide “safe temporary housing appropriate to the needs of families and individuals,” he said the office of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker in a press release.
Migrants “will be housed in dormitory-style spaces at JBCC, with separate spaces to accommodate both individuals and families,” and families will not be separated, he said. According to Baker’s office, they will have access to services including legal services, health care, food, hygiene kits and crisis counseling.
A group of civil rights lawyers working with the migrants said their stories are “heartbreaking and infuriating”. Many of the migrants went to a hospital on Wednesday needing care when they arrived on the island.
Some of those migrants were sent to Martha’s Vineyard even though they have no immigration hearings scheduled near Massachusetts, the group said. Migrants released from government custody often move to other US cities while they go through their immigration procedures.
“This cowardly political maneuver has put our clients at risk,” the group Advocates for Civil Rights said in a press release Friday. “Some have immigration hearings as early as Monday thousands of miles away.”
Some of the group’s lawyers accompanied the migrants on buses to the Cape Cod base.
Although Florida’s governor says he arranged the flights, the migrants had been in Texas, not Florida.
Wednesday’s flights originated in San Antonio, Texas, according to Martha Vineyard Airport Director Geoffrey Freeman.
For months now, DeSantis has been talking about his plans to involve Florida in rerouting migrants from the southern border in a way that will maximize the anger of Democratic leaders. And last month, DeSantis telegraphed that Florida could help move migrants from the US-Mexico border, not from his state.
“We have the money to be able to do (this), but this is from people on the southern border, this is not going to the interior of Florida,” DeSantis said at a press conference in August.
His administration secured $12 million in the state budget to pay for migrant relocation, and has repeatedly threatened to use the money to send them to liberal strongholds.
When outlining his immigration plans at a news conference in December, DeSantis teased Martha’s Vineyard as a potential destination, saying, “It’s a little ironic, but it’s true, if you sent them to Delaware or Martha’s Vineyard or some of these places, the border would be secure the next day.”
At a news conference Friday in Daytona Beach, DeSantis said he intends to use “every penny” of the $12 million and set the expectation for more buses and “probably more” flights with migrants paid for by Florida.
“These are just the initial efforts,” he said. The governor defended using taxpayer dollars to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard because he said many of the people who cross the border end up in his state.
State budget records show that six days before the migrants were flown to Massachusetts, the Florida Department of Transportation paid $615,000 to Destin, Fla.-based aviation company Vertol Systems as part of the program of the governor to relocate the migrants.
Budget records do not detail what kind of “contracted services” Vertol provided to the department, nor is it clear whether the $615,000 was for two flights to Martha’s Vineyard. Additional budget records obtained by CNN also show the state first requested the payment on Sept. 7.
CNN reached out to Vertol Systems, the Department of Transportation and DeSantis’ office, but did not immediately hear back.
The migrants on Wednesday’s planes did not know they were being taken to Martha’s Vineyard specifically, according to the legal group helping them.
They were tricked into boarding planes with “representations of job assistance and immigration assistance in Boston,” the group Advocates for Civil Rights said in a press release.
“Mid-flight, they were informed that they were not going to Boston after all, but to Martha’s Vineyard. They were dropped off on the island without warning anyone in the community,” the press release said.
In his press conference on Friday, Florida’s governor disputed that the migrants did not know where they were going, because he said they had signed a waiver and were provided with a package that included a map of Martha’s Vineyard that added: “It’s obvious that’s where they were going. ,” and it was all “voluntary.”
Two of the migrants told CNN that while in San Antonio, they decided to make the trip after two women and a man approached them on the streets near a migrant resource center.
One of the migrants, Wilmer Villazana, said he was put up in a hotel for five days before the flights and was well taken care of. The women told him they were from Orlando and worked for private organizations that raise funds to help migrants, Villazana said.
One of the women told Villazana and the other migrant, Yang Pablo Mora, that they would receive help with housing and jobs once they reached their destination, Villazana and Mora said.
Villazana and Mora didn’t know the flights were going to Martha’s Vineyard, they said. Villazana thought they were going to Boston, he said.
DeSantis’ decision to organize the flight of migrants to Massachusetts was one of two high-profile transports sent north by southern Republican governors this week. On Thursday, two busloads of migrants sent from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott arrived outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in the nation’s capital.
Texas began busing migrants to Washington this spring. Arizona’s Republican governor Doug Ducey followed suit, and the two states have since sent thousands of migrants to Washington. Abbott has expanded the Texas effort to include New York City and Chicago.
The White House denounced this week’s actions by DeSantis and Abbott on Thursday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused the governors of using migrants as “political pawns” and said their actions amounted to a “cruel and premeditated political ploy.”
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins will speak with members of the Justice Department about DeSantis sending the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, though she doesn’t yet have enough information to say whether he broke any laws in doing so, she told reporters Thursday.
Despite Wednesday’s unannounced arrivals on Martha’s Vineyard, some island residents worked quickly to provide some key services. The island is known for being a summer haven for the wealthy.
“Our island jumped into action by putting together 50 beds, giving everyone a good meal, providing a play area for children, making sure people have the health care and support they need,” said the representative from the state of Massachusetts Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat who represents the island. , he wrote on Twitter. “We are a community that comes together to support immigrants.”