(New York) A lawsuit filed Tuesday against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis accuses him of tricking migrants into getting them on a plane last week bound for an upscale island in the northeastern United States. .
Posted at 9:51 p.m.
In this lawsuit in a Massachusetts court, some of these migrants and an advocacy organization say they were lured with McDonald’s vouchers and promises of assistance once there. ‘island.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, his transportation chief Jared Perdue and several unnamed people are accused of “baiting plaintiffs by exploiting their most basic needs” and making “false promises” of jobs and housing.
PHOTO CHASITY MAYNARD, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis
According to the complaint filed by the group of associations for the defense of migrants’ rights, Alianza Americas, these individuals “manipulated [les migrants]deprived them of their dignity […] in order to pursue an illegal objective and political intentions”.
The group of about fifty Venezuelan migrants, including children, had arrived on Wednesday by plane on the island of Martha’s Vineyard – a resort for the wealthy who hosted the Kennedys, the Clintons or the Obamas – before being temporarily received at a nearby military base.
Ron DeSantis had claimed responsibility for sending these migrants, joining a movement launched by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona to send migrants to Democratic cities in the north and east of the country, in a gesture very policy for their constituents.
The complaint filed on Tuesday asks the judge to authorize the constitution of a class action in this case, to prohibit the opposing parties from using “fraud and erroneous representations” to “lead migrants to go to another State », and to award them damages.
Tuesday was also marked by confusion over the possible arrival of a plane carrying similar migrants from Texas to the state of Delaware, not far from Washington and where President Joe Biden likes to spend his weekends. -ends.
But in the early evening, this plane which was to land at the tiny Georgetown airport had still not arrived and had instead changed course to go to Nashville and then to New Jersey, according to flight tracking sites.
Civil society organizations had made the trip to welcome the migrants, with translators.
Immigration policy, an explosive subject in the United States, is even more so a few weeks before the midterm elections with high stakes, the Republicans accusing Joe Biden of having transformed the border with Mexico into a sieve.