Tell Attorney General Garland: Investigate potential kidnapping of migrants for DeSantis' political stunt.
Contact the Department of Justice via their comment line or web form.
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
We agree with our Governor, Gavin Newsom, that Governors Abbott, DeSantis, and Ducey’s unannounced transfers of migrants to other states are political stunts intended to humiliate and dehumanize immigrants and should be investigated and prosecuted. We ask that you direct the DoJ to start an investigation into these abuses.
We think our federal kidnapping laws would be applicable. It is a crime to kidnap somebody and transport them across state lines, and that crime includes inveigling them to go “voluntarily.” Witness tampering laws might also apply because many migrants have also been tricked into missing their asylum hearings.
Background
The pathetic MAGA Republicans have recycled so much racist garbage we thought we had put behind us. But hate is a powerful drug and constituents today have short memories. Even “America First” is a recycled Nazi slogan from the 1920s. And the dog-whistling Grandpa Reagan used “Make America Great Again” first. So here they are—the desperate MAGA Republicans, dredging up the “Reverse Freedom Rides” from segregationists in 1962 to “own the libs.”
Governor Newsom called national attention to his rival Governor DeSantis for jumping on the macho MAGA migrant-relocation train. He got more people to recognize how repulsive such moves are. But Texas’ MAGA Governor Abbott leads the pack, having bused about 10,000 migrants so far to Washington DC, Chicago, and New York. Desperate MAGA Governor Doug Ducey has transported 1,800 from Arizona since May.
People have accused DeSantis and Abbott of human trafficking for relocating those migrants.
Unfortunately, forced or coerced relocations have a long history in the United States, which the white men making the rules made “legal” at the time, like the forced relocation of the Cherokee and the internment of Japanese Americans. It’s even technically legal for cities to give homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town. Abbott, Ducey, and DeSantis are engaged in a kind of human trafficking, but our state and federal human trafficking laws only criminalize relocating people and children for the purposes of sex or some other labor. Our human trafficking laws must be revised to cover future racist political stunts.
It’s particularly disturbing that DeSantis is the governor of Florida, but involved himself in transferring migrants from Texas to Massachusetts. These actions deserve extra scrutiny:
According to Florida’s budgetary law, he is only allowed to “transport unauthorized aliens” from Florida, not other states.
It seems like DeSantis used $12 million from the American Rescue Plan’s Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SL FRF) for the stunt, so Senator Ed Markey and six other Democratic Members of Congress from Massachusetts have written to the Inspector General of the Treasury Department about this apparent abuse of federal Covid-19 Relief funds.
Migrants transported to Martha’s Vineyard have told reporters that they were enticed with promises of jobs in big cities. In the weeks ahead, we’ll probably learn more about the various promises made to other immigrants and whether the governors have potentially violated federal kidnapping laws. As Elie Mystal says in The Nation:
It is a crime to kidnap somebody and transport them across state lines, and that crime includes tricking people (the legal term is “inveigle”) to go “voluntarily.”
We agree with Mystal’s conclusion:
“Republicans like Abbottt and DeSantis never stop trying to hurt people. They have to be made to stop. The DOJ must try, and if that doesn’t work, then Congress must expand the human trafficking laws to prohibit shipping people across state lines for political gain.
We can’t fix the malfunction in the MAGA heart that allows them to treat children as political pawns, but we can fix the loophole in our laws that allows them to get away with it.”
References
Texas sheriff opens criminal probe into whether migrants were lured to Martha's Vineyard | CBC News, 9/20/2022
Let’s Call DeSantis’s Migrant Stunt What It Is—Kidnapping | The Nation, 9/17/2022
Gavin Newsom right to call Ron DeSantis our ‘chief bully’ | The Sacramento Bee, 9/16/2022
The smoking gun in Martha's Vineyard - by Judd Legum, 9/19/2022
Markey calls for federal probe of DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard maneuver | Salon.com, 9/17/2022
Florida’s use of the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFR), created under the American Rescue Plan Act (Sen Markey letter to Treasury Dept IG, PDF)
Dems push DOJ to probe DeSantis over migrants. But there’s no easy legal answer. - POLITICO,
Governors who shipped migrants North took a page from an old, racist playbook, 9/16/2022
Migrant Buses Compared to 1962 'Reverse Freedom Rides' of Black Families, 9/16/2022
Migrants in San Antonio lured onto Massachusetts flights with false promises | The Texas Tribune, 9/16/2022
DeSantis' latest stunt raises legal, moral questions for governor, Maddow Blog, 9/16/2022
Could DeSantis, Abbott sending migrants to blue states break the law? - The Washington Post, 9/16/2022
On the ground: The scramble to help migrants on Martha's Vineyard, Axios, 9/15/2022
Chicago Receives Another 50 Migrants Sent By Bus From Texas, Bloomberg, 9/05/2022
Criminal Investigation Is Opened After Migrant Flights to Martha’s Vineyard, NY Times, 9/19/2022