ORLANDO, Fla. — Last year, 49 migrants boarded a plane in San Antonio, Texas bound for Martha’s Vineyard.
The trip was bought and paid for by Florida taxpayers.
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Now Sheriff Javier Salazar, of Bexar County, Texas, said not only was Gov. Ron DeSantis wrong for doing it, the move was criminal.
“If you are the governor of Florida, that’s great, go be the best governor of Florida you can be, leave other states alone,” he said.
Salazar said he is taking a stand in his county.
“If we give off that message that it is OK to do this, then you wait until this presidential primary gets into full swing and people are trying to out-crazy each other,” Salazar said. “It’s going to be open season on brown people on the streets of Bexar County in the state of Texas and I am not going to allow it.”
Salazar just finished his investigation into the migrant flight paid for by Florida taxpayers to Martha’s Vineyard.
In the end, he decided what happened is unlawful restraint recommending charges for the two women who worked for the contractor hired by the state of Florida, accusing the women of deceiving and coercing the migrants to get on the plane.
“There was a lot of predatory behavior on the part of these operators,” he said.
Salazar said that the women from Florida approached the Venezuelan migrants outside a city facility where they can stay once they cross the border and offered them $10 Mcdonald’s gift cards and a stay in a hotel for their consent to get on the flight.
DeSantis spoke in Wildwood on Tuesday but did not take questions from the media. His office also did not respond to Channel 9′s requests for comment.
But DeSantis is not in the hot seat when it comes to criminal charges, nor is his staff. But Salazar does place some blame on DeSantis.
“I believe this is the governor’s effort that resulted in this. I, at this point, don’t believe that we have anything that would lead to filing criminal charges against the governor himself, however, I do believe still firmly that people here with boots on the ground did break the law,” Salazar said. “(The migrants) were here legally, they have every right to be here, they also have the right to be left alone.”
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