Bexar County Sheriff, California governor press for DOJ to investigate migrant flights

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar has joined two of California’s top elected officials in asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Florida’s funding of flights shipping migrants out of Texas violated the law.

In a letter sent Thursday to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, Salazar joined California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta in raising concerns that migrants were lured onto the flights by “false representations” that they would receive jobs and assistance if relocated.

Last September, flights arranged by Florida officials whisked 49 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard. A suit by some of those migrants asserts that Perla Huerta, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence agent, lured them onto the planes with false promises of money, housing, employment and social services.

Last month, two separate groups of migrants were shipped from El Paso to Sacramento, California, after being promised work, housing and other help, the letter to the DOJ states, citing reporting by the Los Angeles Times.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has taken credit for the Martha’s Vineyard flights, and California officials are investigating what part he played in the Sacramento flights. In a tweet following the flights that dumped migrants in California, Newsom blasted DeSantis as a “small, pathetic man.”

“It is unconscionable to use people as political props by persuading them to travel to another state based on false or deceptive representations,” the letter from Salazar and the two California officials said. “We urge USDOJ to investigate potential violations of federal law by those involved in this scheme.”

Last month, Salazar said his office had filed criminal charges with the Bexar County District Attorney’s office over the Martha’s Vineyard flights. Those include “both misdemeanor and felony” charges of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff, although he didn’t identify the people against whom he’s seeking charges.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Justice is conducting civil and criminal probes into the flights from the Golden State.

Further, a letter from the Treasury Department last fall confirmed that it too was investigating the Martha’s Vineyard flights to determine whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis improperly used federal COVID-19 relief money to fund the flights.

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This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 11, 2023.