After Democrats accused Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis of acting illegally in transporting 50 illegal immigrants to the wealthy leftist enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a leading conservative law professor compared the actions of DeSantis to the massive number of immigrants President Biden has transported throughout the country.
Some of the Democrats making the scurrilous charges against DeSantis included California Governor Gavin Newsom, who urged the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation and hyperventilated that DeSantis’ potentially constituted “kidnapping” as well as Florida State Representative Fentrice Driskell, who said DeSantis violated state statute.
“What they’re arguing here is that this is an illegal transport of migrants. If that was the case, then Joe Biden would be the biggest coyote ever,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley countered on Fox News, adding, “I mean, he’s transferring thousands of people across the country.”
With regard to immigration, the term “coyote” is used to indicate people who smuggle illegal immigrants across the border.
“I don’t see a case unless they can establish some systemic coercion or fraud,” Turley said. “There’s really not a federal crime here. They can find individual cases that might be somehow actionable, but what the state has said is that they have expressed consent for these flights.”
Turley pointed out that the immigrants DeSantis transported may well have wanted to leave the border area from where they left.
“There are rational reasons why someone would want to leave the border area, which has been — just has this influx of undocumented migrants, and go to areas that might have better employment possibilities or better levels of support,” he asserted. “Also, public interest organizations transfer migrants. All of them are saying, is they need to, and need to establish that this is done with their consent, but there are rational reasons why migrants would want to go to New York or Chicago and away from these border areas.”
Turley’s argument was buttressed by senior Florida state officials.
“So the groups in Texas that we’ve identified, the majority if not all of the individuals that originated in Texas and ended up on the flight to Martha’s Vineyard were indeed homeless, hungry, sleeping outside in parking lots,” the officials told reporters. “Many have been in a shelter at some point previously and had been kicked out, did not have a place to go, and essentially were wandering homeless along the border.”
“These were homeless people that were in a rough situation and undoubtedly had their circumstance improved. In fact, several have already communicated their thanks for the opportunity to go to the sanctuary state,” they concluded.
Story cited here.
