Attorneys for Venezuelan asylum seekers who were shipped to Martha’s Vineyard last week by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are calling for a criminal probe into the “shameful political stunt.”
“We strongly believe that criminal laws were broken by the perpetrators of this stunt,” read a letter from Boston’s Lawyers for Civil Rights sent Saturday to US Attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.
“This type of conspiracy to deprive our clients of their liberty and civil rights must be thoroughly investigated for violations … of all applicable criminal laws,” LCR demanded.
New York City Major Eric Adams also warned Sunday that he is considering legal action over similar human trafficking to his city by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has bused some 2,500 migrants to New York.
“Our legal team is looking at legal challenges” against Texas, Adams said on CBS New York. “When you place someone [involuntarily] on a bus, we believe that skates the law. We’re not leaving any stone unturned to make sure that New Yorkers are [not] being treated in an unfair way,” he added.
The Venezuelan victims in Massachusetts were “induced to board planes and cross state lines under false pretenses,” landing far from where they had intended to be, according to LCR.
The group, which is representing 30 of the 48 people flown from Texas to the Massachusetts vacation Island Wednesday, charged that “individuals, working in concert with state officials, including the Florida governor, made numerous false promises [to the migrants] – including work opportunities, schooling for their children … in order to induce them to travel.” They only learned of their true destination mid-flight, LCR noted.
They were conned in what amounted to a coordinated political “stunt” targeting vulnerable people as young as two years old, “based on