Florida Republicans appear to be in damage control mode following accusations of kidnapping and human trafficking with the political stunt by Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
September 18, 2022

Florida Republicans appear to be in damage control mode following accusations of kidnapping and human trafficking with the political stunt by Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Here's FL Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez during a portion of a twelve minute long interview on this Sunday's Fox & Friends, insisting the migrants were not misled, and pretending that the states and not the feds are in charge of immigration policy in the United States.

CAIN: Lieutenant Governor, I want to actually give you an opportunity to respond to some of the things. So there are various accusations, or course you've seen it, kidnapping, human trafficking, but I do, I am curious about the details. So I know that 50 illegal immigrants came from Texas through the coordination with Florida.

You're being accused of lying to the immigrants, illegal immigrants about where they were headed, that's one of the things in addition to the kidnapping charges that are being thrown out. Is that true? Under, what was the... my understanding all of these, all of this is under voluntary status when it comes to these immigrants heading north. How was this coordinated?

NUNEZ: Well, those accusations are categorically false. I think everyone that has some semblance of common sense can understand that. This was a voluntary program –again, voluntary, meeting the individual, the illegal immigrant had to acquiesce. There was consent forms. There was information provided, a map, I understand of Martha's Vineyard.

So all of this was done with full consent, full awareness. There was no lying. There was no duping. This is not like Biden's program of flying people in the cloak of darkness, not not informing the government and not informing us when we've requested information.

We've had to sue the Biden administration for the catch and release policy. So all of this was done absolutely under the sunshine if you will, with ample information, and these people opted to go there. They came into Florida and from there they went on to their final destination.

And again, the governor said this was, very clearly, this was a tool that we had on our disposal, something that we approved back in March, so now all of a sudden they come to the realization that for once a governor will do what he says and say what he does.

The immigration attorney that interviewed some of the migrants would beg to differ. As The Washington Post reported, the migrants were told they were going to Boston for expedited work papers, signed waivers that they may or may not have understood, when they arrived at their destination, no one knew they were coming, and were told to change their addresses with the wrong agency.

Of course, none of those pesky details came up during the interview with Nunez.

Fox is all-in with the fearmongering over migrants coming to the United States and with aiding and abetting Republican governors who pull these sort of stunts. Until there's some criminal or civil action taken to put a stop to this, don't expect any of them to put the brakes on this nonsense any time soon.

They are, however, trying to get out ahead of any criminal charges that might arise from this with their base. They're working the refs hard trying to pretend what they did wasn't cruel and/or illegal.

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