Ron DeSantis news – latest: Migrant flight funding revealed

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar’s office has reportedly received numberous “hateful emails” and threats after announcing an investigation into migrant flights out of San Antonio, coordinated by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration, several states away.

After two nights in a church shelter, migrants who arrived in Massachusetts were moved to a larger shelter operation on the mainland, with separate rooms and medical and legal support. State officials report that the families are in “good health and good spirits,” with access to legal services, humanitarian aid and interpreters.

But so much remains unclear about the migrants’ journey, how Florida officials are identifying and collecting migrants in other states as part of the Republican governor’s state-sanctioned plans to send them to Democratic-leading states and cities, and how funding earmarked for his scheme is paying for it from several states away.

Writing for The Independent Premium, US editor of Voices Holly Baxter writes how two Republican governors are ramping up political stunts ahead of the midterms at the expense of vulnerable migrants and their families:

A 27-year-old Venezuelan migrant says he was given $200 to entice his fellow asylum-seekers to board planes or buses bound for Democrat-held areas chartered by Florida’s governor.

And he was instructed to do so with promises of aid that never materialised or was ever real to begin with, he now says.

If true, it would prove that Florida officials used deceptive practices to lure migrants thousands of miles across the United States for purely political reasons.

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis now leads Donald Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup among voters in Florida, according to a new Axios poll.

The development comes as Mr DeSantis has become a hero on the far right for his effort to use state funding to transport migrants from Texas to Democrat-held areas, even as he admits that large groups of migrants entering his state remain nonexsistent.

The performance in the poll is notable, too, because Donald Trump won the Florida primary against Sen Marco Rubio, the state’s senior senator, during the 2016 primary in what was one of his last moves to eliminate his rivals in the GOP presidential contest.

Donald Trump is privately raging at fellow Republican Ron DeSantis over the governor’s decision to authorise flights carrying roughly 50 migrants last week from the southern border to Martha’s Vineyard, Rolling Stone reported.

The magazine reported that two inside sources close to the twice-impeached president had heard him vent about the Republican governor taking the limelight off Trump and accused him of using the migrant flights to prop up his national profile ahead of a potential bid for the White House.

Read more in The Independent:

A contractor owned by a Republican donor is seeing a massive windfall thanks to Ron DeSantis’s efforts to fly migrants from Texas to Massachusetts, and to other Democratic strongholds.

New analyses of state records indicate that more than $1m in funding for the flights was given to the company as it carries out Mr DeSantis’s efforts to embarrass the Biden White House.

Read more from Alex Woodward in The Independent:

The GOP governors of Florida and Texas have shown no signs of letting up in their campaign to embarass the Biden administration by organising flights of migrants to liberal-controlled cities. The plan has been roundly criticised for supposedly deceptive practices and the overall legality of the process.

“There’s also going to be buses, and there will likely be more flights,” Mr DeSantis said on Friday. “The Legislature gave me $12 million. We’re going to spend every penny of that to make sure that we’re protecting the people of the state of Florida.”

Mr Abbott, whose “Operation Lone Star” has bused more than 10,000 migrants into liberal cities across the country, has also promised more of the same.

“Texas will continue sending migrants to sanctuary cities like Washington, DC until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border,” he said last week in a statement.

Read more from Josh Marcus:

Ron DeSantis and other Republicans are working overtime to refocus the midterms on the issue of immigration as their party faces the unfavourable prospect of voters casting their ballots amid unprecedented criminal investigations into Donald Trump as well as the GOP’s new campaign to restrict abortion rights nationwide.

“It will be a big issue in the elections, I can tell you that,” Mr DeSantis vowed on Tuesday. “It’s already made more of an impact than anyone thought it could possibly make. But we’re going to continue to make more of an impact.”

Read more in The Independent:

The White House says it is taking over the task of coordinating with state agencies to prepare for the arrivals of groups of migrants organised by the governors of Florida and Texas after those Republicans refused to communicated with local governments or aid groups at all.

“We are coordinating closely with state officials and local service providers who are prepared to welcome these families in an orderly manner as they pursue their asylum claims,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Read more about the administration’s efforts from Alex Woodward: