“About 50 Venezuelan migrants arrived by plane on the island of Martha’s Vineyard on September 14 and were left in the care of the authorities of the island”, report it Boston Globe.
A certain confusion even reigned on their arrival, continues the daily, since no one knew exactly who had chartered these planes to send the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy island in Massachusetts especially famous for sheltering the second homes of wealthy personalities.
One of these planes “originally originated from San Antonio, Texas, before stopping in Florida to then route migrants north,” explains the daily.
Escalade
But the spokeswoman for Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News television that Florida authorities had sent those people “as part of its plan to relocate undocumented migrants to so-called sanctuary states, like Massachusetts”.
The New York Times highlighted that Florida has provisioned “12 million dollars this year to fund this transportation program”.
For the New York daily, “a new notch” is crossed in the tactic adopted for several months by republican states – in particular on the border – consisting in “relocate their migrants to progressive strongholds in order to protest once morest the sharp increase in illegal immigration since the beginning of Joe Biden’s mandate”.
As the Florida Governor’s spokeswoman pointed out, “Massachusetts, New York or California will be better equipped to support these people, whom they have encouraged to come to our country by designating themselves as ‘sanctuary states’ and by supporting the open border policy of the Biden administration”.
Overwhelmed “sanctuary states”
Martha’s Vineyard authorities now face a challenge, notes the New York Times : taking care of these migrants “on an island with a population of only 20,000” and which “the only homeless shelter, with ten places, is not open during the summer season”.
Even large cities like New York or Chicago have difficulty managing these unexpected flows of migrants, continues the Big Apple daily. On September 13, Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker had to make arrangements to open emergency shelters. “to shelter the approximately 500 migrants brought by bus from Texas since August 31”. In the columns of New York Timesthis governor points out:
“While other states use these vulnerable families as mere pawns, we in Illinois treat them humanely.”
