Florida legislators shut down questions over DeSantis’ migrant flights
Meeting for the first time since Gov. Ron DeSantis initiated his controversial Martha’s Vineyard migrant flights, Florida lawmakers shut down questions Wednesday about whether his agency violated state law when it used money earmarked for relocating migrants out of Florida to relocate them out of Texas instead.
“I haven’t had a chance to look into the details of it,’‘ said Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland and co-chair of the Legislative Budget Commission. The commission, which has oversight authority over state spending, held an emergency meeting Wednesday to authorize $360 million in additional funds for Hurricane Ian recovery.
“You have to remember, timeline-wise, that happened maybe, what, a week before all of this?’‘ Stargel asked, referring to Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida on Sept. 28, two weeks after the migrant flights. She suggested that by asking about it, reporters were attempting to “create consternation between us and the governor and the process.”
Florida legislators authorized $12 million during the legislative session this year to pay for transporting migrants out of Florida after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made headlines when he bused migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago.
READ MORE: Treasury Department to investigate Florida’s use of COVID funds for migrant flights
By August, DeSantis told reporters that the Texas effort had “taken a lot of pressure off us,” referring to Florida.
What the governor didn’t say is that, since July, the Florida Department of Transportation had been putting together a program to fly migrants from San Antonio to either Boston or Los Angeles, according to documents released last Friday to the Miami Herald in response to a public records request.
Those documents also show that the state guidelines for the program explicitly required that the budget allocation was to be used “to relocate out of the state of Florida” migrants who were in the U.S. illegally. The guidelines said nothing about using the money to relocate migrants who never set foot in Florida.
After documents emerged showing Florida paid $615,000 for two charter flights to take 48 Venezuelan passengers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Sept. 14, legislators remained silent.
Stargel said that legislators were focused on recovering from Hurricane Ian, which occurred two weeks after the flights, and therefore couldn’t comment.
“When all that happened, the function stopped and we focused on the priority of today, which is also what we focused on just now,’’ she said, referring to authorizing the emergency spending. “Those things will get handled, but today’s not the day to handle them.”
Three lawsuits have now been filed alleging that DeSantis and the Florida Department of Transportation violated state law when it spent $1.5 million on projects to fly migrants out of San Antonio.
Only the Martha’s Vineyard project was completed. The Miami Herald learned that another flight scheduled the next week from San Antonio to Delaware was scrubbed.
This story was originally published October 12, 2022 at 4:46 PM.
