The 48 Venezuelans whom the governor of Florida assembled a team to fly from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard had crossed the southern border without authorization and turned themselves in to border officials. Many if not all may intend to apply for asylum in the United States, like thousands of other refugees from the Maduro dictatorship in recent years. The application process for asylum takes months and must begin either at the border or on the U.S. side of it. They went to the border.
Some of them say that a woman who identified herself as “Perla” explained to them an offer of housing and educational and employment opportunities and that it entailed their being flown to Boston or Washington, D.C. They signed an agreement. They were flown to neither city.
Some of them have filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida, two of its officials, and its department of transportation. They allege that the Florida operation lied to them on several counts. It gave them, for example, a brochure that, designed to look like an official publication of the state of Massachusetts (and featuring the wrong state flag), included information on a suite of refugee benefits that didn’t apply to them.
Whatever the merits or weaknesses of their lawsuit, the Florida operation is wrong in two ways. The first is that it spends money on an expenditure not stipulated in Florida’s budget, which earmarks $12 million “to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law.” Texas isn’t Florida.
Under the definition provided in the U.S. Code, all of the 48 Venezuelans are unauthorized aliens, however, if they have not yet been granted permanent residency status or eligibility for employment. That would not mean that they’re in the country illegally. Their case brings to light that the Florida budget provides for the removal of refugees from anywhere — including Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — who are lawfully seeking asylum in the United States.
Miami-Dade County is a magnet for Venezuelans who have fled the Chávez and Maduro regime. More than 11 percent of the population of Doral, a Miami suburb, are estimated to have been born in Venezuela. Whether intended or not, the message that the government of Florida has sent to their relatives who might be thinking about joining them is “Don’t.” (Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of Miami-Dade declined 1.4 percent from April 2020 to July 2021, and the county government acknowledges a labor shortage.)
The second way in which the Florida operation is wrong is moral. The governor of Florida denies that it misled the migrants. Whether or not it met some minimum legal standard of not lying, it withheld from them information about its purpose. If its objective had been to help migrants in another state relocate to and settle in yet another state (but not Florida), organizers would have called and coordinated with officials in Massachusetts or elsewhere. They didn’t.
Here’s what Perla would have said to the Venezuelan migrants if the operation had been transparent:
We’ll fly you for free to Martha’s Vineyard, an island resort in Massachusetts. We haven’t told anyone there that you’ll be coming. We don’t know what you’ll encounter there, but we have reason to think you’ll be accommodated. You’ll probably find conditions there to be acceptable, no worse than those at the migrant center here in San Antonio.
We are not with the U.S. government or with the state of Massachusetts. We’re with the state of Florida, specifically with the office of its governor, who may run for president.
We’re concerned about the U.S. southern border in Texas and Arizona. The U.S. Border Patrol is overwhelmed by the surge of migrants showing up there. We want to discourage any more from coming. Many who disagree with us live up north. We want you to show up on their doorstep to make them experience something of the financial and logistical burden that people like you more often impose on American citizens in the southwest.
That’s our interest in this endeavor. Deal?