A human trafficker named Perla lied to asylum seekers in Texas to get them on one of two planes flying to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts paid for by taxpayers of Florida at the direction of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, documents provided by the non-profit advocacy group Lawyers for Civil Rights shows.
As the pamphlet shown above depicts, the asylum seekers were told they would be given “refugee cash assistance,” “refugee employment services,” and various relocation services available to refugees once they reached Massachusetts. These were all false promises primarily because the humans being trafficked by Perla, DeSantis and Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott are not refugees; they’re asylum seekers.
Demonstrating how ignorant DeSantis and Abbott are of federal law–and how unsuited they are for federal office–the stunt is coming under fire for its use of human beings as props, but it also plays on general ignorance of the legal status of asylum seekers in the United States that fuels right-wing hatred.
Asylum seekers are a specific class of migrants coming to the United States who are individually persecuted or endangered in their home nations and who come to the United States to seek protection from malicious groups–whether criminal gangs or political opponents or a melding of both. They have a formal procedure to seek asylum in the US, including turning themselves into to authorities who schedule a hearing for a review of their individual cases. All the people DeSantis cattle-carred to Martha’s Vineyard were asylum seekers who had complied with the law and who are either awaiting an asylum hearing or are waiting to be assigned a date for their hearing.
Ignorant conservatives like Abbott and DeSantis believe that anyone who crosses the borders into Texas or Florida (which actually doesn’t border a foreign country) are refugees or undocumented migrants. Refugees come from countries that have an ongoing concern for the health and safety of all residents from things like war, famine or a natural disaster. There are specific protocols for refugees–including the much-touted idea that all refugees must register in the first “safe haven” nation that can provide assistance, which conservative believe means that migrants–not refugees–must stay in Mexico. (While one could argue that all refugees are migrants, it is definitely not true that all migrants are refugees.)
International law governs the treatment of refugees, with host countries taking in a specific number of refugees each year–for 2022, the US has committed to receiving 125,000 refugees–and providing care and shelter for them.
The people DeSantis trafficked to Massachusetts are not refugees, and are therefore not eligible for the programs outlined in the fraudulent pamphlet “Perla” and DeSantis gave to the victims of DeSantis’s Florida-funded kidnapping plot.