San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Immigrants’ lives aren’t a game show
The nation’s broken immigration system won’t be pieced together by the stunts and showboats of politicians and the exploitation and dehumanization of immigrants. Fixing the border won’t be accomplished by governors playing games with immigrants by shipping them across states like commodities used to increase political fortunes.
That’s why we welcomed the news Monday night of Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar’s announcement that he’s recommending felony and misdemeanor charges of unlawful restraint for those involved in flying immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last fall.
The prosecution of the political operatives of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who orchestrated two flights of immigrants from San Antonio, would punctuate the message to elected officials that immigrants, desperate for a better life, are human beings who deserve dignity, not items to be used for political gain.
Salazar didn’t identify any of the suspects, saying the case is being reviewed by the Bexar County District Attorney’s office. The Texas penal code defines unlawful restraint as using force, intimidation or deception to restrict a person’s freedom of movement, including “by moving the person from one place to another.”
The 49 immigrants, a majority of whom were fleeing a dictatorial regime in Venezuela, had done nothing wrong; they hadn’t done, as Salazar thinks DeSantis and crew may have done, anything illegal. They’d legally applied for asylum in the United States.
Unfortunately for them, they weren’t the first passengers on those two flights. Flying first class was DeSantis’ presidential ambitions. That’s why he paid an aviation company $615,000 in Florida taxpayer funds to transport the asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, where residents didn’t know they were coming, but fed, clothed and sheltered them.
The immigrants claimed — and there’s evidence to support — they were lured to make the trip with deceptive promises of jobs, services and places to live.
Clearly, DeSantis was trying to be more anti-immigrant than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who was — and still is — busing migrants to cities led by Democratic mayors, including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
On Christmas Eve, Abbott loaded three buses with migrants and sent
them to Washington, D.C., where residents were experiencing its coldest weather in decades. Without adequate clothing to protect them in freezing weather, the immigrants were left on the street.
DeSantis, who has announced his candidacy for president, hasn’t stopped using asylum-seekers. Last Friday, the first flights chartered by DeSantis transporting about three dozen asylum-seekers from Colombia and Venezuela arrived in Sacramento. The immigrants, who had been given pending court dates by U.S. Immigration officials before they were approached in El Paso, told officials they were promised jobs by people who told them they were Florida government employees.
Not to be outdone in grotesque displays of showmanship, Abbott is now requesting audience participation, sending fundraising letters asking, “Now, we want to know which sanctuary city should migrants go to next?”
He offers the choices of: Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Somewhere Else.
While we support the transport of immigrants when done humanely, this goes too far. This isn’t a game show. Migrants aren’t consolation prizes or items behind doors number one, two or three. These are human beings, children, women and men doing what the ancestors of Abbott and DeSantis did generations ago: struggle to make it to America, land of more opportunities than the Somewhere Elses from which they left.
A land where even if you’re not a citizen, you have a right to not be exploited and, if you are exploited, to know that you will be protected by law.
We understand that, as District Attorney Joe Gonzales said in a statement, proving that crimes have been committed “may be lengthy and laborintensive under the best of circumstances.”
But pursuing justice is worth the investment. Playing with the life-ordeath dreams of asylum-seekers for political aspirations should have consequences.
Abbott, DeSantis should face consequences for migrant transport