Sen. Luján: GOP Governors ‘Hateful’ for Bussing Migrants

Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-NM (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

WASHINGTON — Forty-five House Democrats sent a letter Friday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting the Justice Department look into a “political stunt” by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), after DeSantis took credit for sending 48 Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week.

“It is alleged that immigration officials knowingly falsified mailing addresses for the migrants,” said the letter, “with the expectation that the migrants would be required to attend court proceedings as early as next week in states thousands of miles away or face forced removal.”

On Monday, Sheriff Javier Salazar (D) in Bexar County, Texas opened an investigation into the flights that left San Antonio, saying he suspected ” there is some criminal activity involved here.”

“We are trying to keep an open mind and we are going to investigate to find out what exact laws were broken if that does turn out to be the case,” Salazar said.

DeSantis is the latest MAGA governor —after Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey— to relocate migrants to northern locales like Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Martha’s Vineyard.

“You notice also that they only seem to be doing it to Spanish-speaking migrants, even though you have people coming literally from all over the world as migrants to the United States, including from Europe,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (R-TX). “It speaks to the racism of these people. It is outright a result of their racist perspective.”

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) agrees. “I think there’s a level of racism in all of this,” Espaillat told Latino Rebels on Wednesday. “There’s no question about that.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said the migrants were defrauded, but that accountability for the governors is a state law issue.

“There’s a lot of laws in different states about fraud,” said Kaine, who would not say if the Department of Justice should get in involved. “I’m not telling DOJ what to do.”

“All aspects of what these Republican governors are doing is hateful,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). “It’s at the lowest of lows to try to make a political point from Republican governors who are going to try to run for president.”

Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R) said he had not seen reports of the migrants being misled.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) laughed when asked if Gov. Abbott should be coordinating with the states he sends migrants to.”Nobody’s given us a heads up when they come across the border,” said Cornyn.

“Every state’s a border state,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) before blaming migrants for fentanyl and accusing Latino Rebels of “mainstream media” bias.

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Pablo Manríquez is the Capitol Hill correspondent for Latino Rebels. Twitter: @PabloReports