Migrants news live: DeSantis suggests more flights are coming as he defends Martha’s Vineyard stunt

Following a massive refugee crisis from political fallout and violence in Venezuela, millions have fled, with many making a difficult and dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico for the chance of claiming asylum in the US.

Germania Rodriguez Poleo writes for The Independent’s Voices:

Ron DeSantis has broken a fundraising record for a gubernatorial campaign, raising $175.8m for his campaign committee and affiliated political action committee, according to a disclosure he filed on Friday.

The number exceeds that of all other fundraising except for money that candidates give to their own campaigns. By comparison, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is running for reelection, raised $116.8m as of 30 July 2022.

The Independent’s Eric Garcia reports from Washington:

House Democratic leadership in Florida will discuss plans for the state legislature to “cease” Governor Ron DeSantis’s inappropriate use of taxpayer money” to transport people seeking asylum to other states.

“This use of state funds is not what was intended or described in law, nor was it what was discussed in debate,” according to a statement from House lawmakers Evan Jenne and Fentrice Driskell.

Officials will hold a press conference outlining next steps on Monday at 10am EST.

The governor has repeatedly defended his scheme, part of a $12m state budget line approved by lawmakers earlier this year to remove migrants from the state. His aides and campaign also have sneered at Democratic lawmakers who voted to support the state budget, which included the programme intended to remove “unauthorized aliens”.

State records show that the state paid an Oregon-based flight company more than $600,000 a week before two planes in Texas were loaded with mostly Venezuelan migrants, whose asylum claims were being processed in Texas, and sent to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday, at the governor’s request.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday ended up in a testy exchange with Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, as Ms Jean-Pierre spent a significant portion of the briefing discussing the Biden administration’s response to Republican governors using buses and airplanes to send asylum-seekers to Democratic-led jurisdictions to punish state and local leaders for not supporting harsher border policies.

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington:

A 27-year-old Venezuelan migrant told the San Antonio Reportthat he was paid $200 in cash torecruit people from outside the San Antonio Migrant Resource Center to board a flight to Martha’s Vineyard.

He said a woman named “Perla” instructed him to identify migrants; he gave her the names of 10 migrants he met near the centre.

“Perla informed me that in those sanctuary states, the state has the benefits to help migrants,” he told the outlet. “I’ve just been the mediator because I like to help people.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claims migrants signed release forms and were provided a “packet” with a map of Martha’s Vineyard before they were put on planes from Texas to the Massachusetts island.

He said migrants were “identified” as likely to come to Florida, where they would “impose a lot of cost on the community, so we’re trying to avoid that.”

The governor did not clarify how migrants were identified in Texas as bound for Florida, and why the state was investigating cases several states away.

He said “there’s a bunch of stuff that’s gone into creating the infrastructure” to move migrants out of states.

“I’ve got $12m for us to use, so we’re going to use it,” he told reporters on Friday. “You’re going to see more and more. I’m going to make sure we exhause all those funds.”

The former president’s oldest son appeared to joke about violence against migrants arriving in the US while criticising progressive border policies by sharing a series of memes that depict scenes where migrants were attacked by border officials on the US southern border.

“You know it’s coming,” he said in an Instagram post showing a photoshopped image of a Border Patrol agent on horseback chasing Haitian migrants seeking asylum along the US-Mexico border.

To applause and laughter from his supporters, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday defended hiring planes to move a group of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, claiming that the administartion identified migrants that planned to travel to Florida.

His administration will “continue to use every tool at our disposal to insulate the state of Florida from the negative ramifcations of [President Joe Biden’s] reckless border policies,” he said.

“This is a massive policy failure by the president … causing huge amount of damage all across the country.”

He said “there will likely be more flights” relying on a $12m state budget line that stipulates that the state can move migrants out of the state to so-called “sanctuary” states and cities.

“We’re doing to spend every penny of that,” he said.

Former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday that migrants shipped out of states by Republican govnoers are being “taken advantage of” for the GOP’s political purposes.

“You have laid out the craziness of the time in which we’re living where some politicians would rather not only have an issue but exacerbate it to the extent of literally human trafficking,” she said.