On September 14th, Governor Ron Desantis decided to use 50 Venezuelan immigrants, including children as pawns in his political game against the Biden administration immigration policies. Desantis didn’t transport these asylum seeking migrants from Florida’s population of almost 800,000 undocumented immigrants, instead he used Florida tax dollars to transport migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. That this borderline act of human trafficking was done by a sitting Governor is low, even for Desantis.

These migrants were lied to and manipulated into boarding the planes by former counterintelligence agent Perla Huerta, with promises of help under the direction of Desantis. Instead, they were met with confusion and uncertainty. The town of Martha’s Vineyard received no warning and had to scramble to help these confused migrants.

Putting aside how cruel it was to use migrants as pawns in his political games, there still is no reason for why Ron Desantis should use the taxpayer dollars to send migrants from Texas to Massachusetts other than to further his own political agenda instead of helping actual residents of his state.

Desantis had a less than weak reasoning for his actions, claiming that this move was to protect Florida from what he declares as a border crossing increase. In other words, these migrants may have come to Florida and that is why he went all the way to Texas to find migrants to send elsewhere.

That reasoning goes against his actions however, signing a law that excused the majority of private companies from having to verify all of their workers were legal via the government E-Verify database system. Florida has a large population of undocumented immigrants, many of which are being exploited by Florida’s agriculture and construction industries due to bills like the one Desantis signed into law.

Ron Desantis didn’t want to fly undocumented immigrants from Florida because industries like agriculture are some of the governor’s biggest donors. He needs their support, so he lets these industries keep illegally hiring undocumented workers in exchange for money to keep him in power.