Some of the migrants who got a one-way ticket from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Ma., in 2022, compliments of the state of Florida, may qualify for visas that grant legal status to undocumented immigrants who are victims of a crime, Newsweek reports. So far only three of the roughly four dozen migrants that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered flown to the East Coast resort community via Texas have received "bona fide determinations for a new visa," but not the U visa itself, the migrants' lawyer, Rachel Self said. Although criminal charges in the case remain uncertain, the determination of their victim status adds to the controversy surrounding DeSantis' emulation of tactics used by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call attention to immigration policy disputes.
Florida sent two planes of about 50 migrants, including children, from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard. Critics called the move a stunt that cost Florida taxpayers about $615,000, or about $12,300 per migrant paid out of a $12 million fund to relocate unauthorized immigrants from Florida. After they touched down, the migrants, aided by civil rights attorneys, filed a class action lawsuit demanding financial compensation for "economic, emotional and constitutional harms." Those same migrants are now able to temporarily live and work legally in the U.S. while avoiding deportation due to applying to receive special visas, Self said. She said the individuals were tricked into taking charter flights from San Antonio to Massachusetts with false promises of jobs and other aid. DeSantis argues that migrants were flown from Texas and not from Florida because it was easier to gather more migrants in one area near the U.S.-Mexico border. DeSantis' actions were challenged by the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, headed by Javier Salazar, which last June completed its criminal investigation regarding the transporting of the migrants and recommended misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint. On April 1, however, Boston Judge Allison Burroughs dismissed the governor and other officials as defendants and allowed the suit to proceed against only one of the original nine defendants, Vertol Systems, the plane charter company hired by Florida to fly the migrants to the island community just off the coast of Cape Cod, according to the Boston Globe. "The Bexar County Sheriff's Office completed a thorough investigation and submitted a complete case on the events which occurred here in Bexar County," Salazar told Newsweek via email. "It is our belief that the facts of the case met the elements of the offense of unlawful restraint, as demonstrated in the case forwarded."