USA: More immigrant activity on the southern border 0:42
(CNN) --
Delaware volunteers and state officials began making preparations Tuesday after reports and flight plans emerged suggesting a plane chartered to take migrants to Martha's Vineyard last week was about to take another. group of immigrants to the president's home state.
As of Tuesday afternoon, however, there was still no sign of that flight, and the plane expected to leave Kelly Field in San Antonio hadn't even arrived at the departure airport.
"We are aware of the reports and continue to prepare for the possibility of immigrants arriving in Delaware unannounced," Emily David Hershman, a spokeswoman for Delaware Governor John Carney, said in a statement to CNN.
"Our teams at DEMA [the emergency management agency] and DHSS [the state health services] are working with community organizations and other partners to make sure immigrants arriving here have the support they need," referring to the Emergency Management Agency and the Delaware Health and Human Services Agency.
Lawyers for Migrants Sent to Martha's Vineyard Investigate Source of Flyers They Believe Were Distributed Under "False Pretenses"
"We are coordinating with federal officials and are prepared to welcome these families in an orderly manner as they pursue their asylum claims."
Last week, a group of almost 50 immigrants, most of them from Venezuela, were transferred by plane from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, under the provisions adopted by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
The migrants spent 44 hours on Martha's Vineyard and have since been taken to Joint Base Cape Cod.
DeSantis, a Republican who is running for re-election this year, said he wanted to draw attention to the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border and criticize the immigration policies of the Biden administration.
advertising
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, another Republican up for re-election, has similarly bused thousands of immigrants to New York and Washington, both run by Democrats, over the summer.
Texas, Arizona and Florida send thousands of immigrants north.
Why do they do it?
Is it legit?
Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, told CNN that he has been on the phone, including for "much of last night," with community leaders "to make sure we provide an appropriate, welcoming and supportive reception in Delaware." " in case immigrants are sent to your state.
"Just what a cruel stunt for a group of people who are claiming asylum. 'There are going to be jobs and housing on both sides of this flight, get on this plane,'" Coons said.
"And then they get off the plane and they're like, no. You're a thousand miles away from where your audience is going to be."
Previously, a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN that the agency has contacted the state of Delaware and provided general guidance, as well as contacted non-governmental organizations in the area in case The flight takes place this Tuesday.
Flight-tracking sites overnight showed a flight plan filed with a commercial scheduler and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) involving one of the Ultimate Jet charter planes used on the flights. Martha's Vineyard and that it looked like that flight.
The sites listed a route from Kelly Field in San Antonio to a brief stop in Crestview, Florida, and on to Georgetown, Delaware.
CNN witnessed the volunteers arrive at the Delaware Coastal Airport in Georgetown as plans remained unclear.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say how the White House got the news that a migrant plane might arrive in Delaware.
"I don't have the details of who or where we got the news, but I can tell you that we've been coordinating closely with the people of Delaware, Delaware officials," he said.
"What I can tell you is that our tip did not come from Governor DeSantis because his only goal is, as he has made really very clear, to create chaos and use immigrants fleeing communism as political pawns," he said.
"So it's about creating a political theater."
Biden says Republicans are “playing politics with human beings” after DeSantis and Abbott send immigrants to Martha's Vineyard and Washington
DeSantis has repeatedly suggested sending immigrants to Delaware
Over the past nine months, DeSantis has repeatedly suggested that Delaware would be a potential landing point for immigrants transported through Florida's new relocation program, targeting the president's home state more than any other Democratic destination, often with the massive applause from Republican audiences.
DeSantis initially issued the threat as a warning to the federal government not to send large groups of immigrants processed at the border to Florida.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, DeSantis told the crowd that "if Biden dumps illegal aliens into Florida from the southern border, I will divert them to Delaware."
When that didn't happen, DeSantis began floating the idea of using state dollars to transport immigrants directly from the border to Biden's doorstep.
"They don't like red states sending illegal aliens into their communities," DeSantis said last month at a rally in Pittsburgh for GOP candidates in that city.
"We're happy to help with all of that when we can, including not only shipping to New York and Washington, but shipping to Delaware as well."
At an unrelated news conference Tuesday afternoon, DeSantis, when asked, said "I can't confirm" the Delaware reports, but defended the Martha's Vineyard flights as helpful to the immigrants involved.
"They were hungry, they were homeless, they didn't have a chance," DeSantis said.
"They were given the opportunity to be in perhaps the most elegant sanctuary jurisdiction in the world. And obviously the people of Martha's Vineyard are said to have deported them the next day. They could have absorbed this. They decided not to."
What are sanctuary cities?
In fact, Martha's Vineyard and Massachusetts state officials coordinated with the military to move the migrants to Joint Base Cape Cod.
The flights to Martha's Vineyard were harshly denounced by the White House, Democratic officials and immigration attorneys who say the immigrants were misled about their final destination and used for political maneuvering.
Lawyers for many of the immigrants said Monday that the brochures given to their clients were "highly misleading" and "used to entice (their) clients to travel under the guise that (resettlement) support was available to them." .
A Democratic Texas sheriff said Monday night his agency will open an investigation into the Martha's Vineyard flights, saying he believed they were "exploited and misled."
However, DeSantis defended his actions on Fox News Monday night, calling Martha's Vineyard a "sanctuary jurisdiction," a term for localities with policies designed to limit cooperation or participation in federal enforcement action. immigration law.
"They all signed consent forms to go and then the vendor that's doing this for Florida provided them with a package that had a map of Martha's Vineyard, it had the numbers for the different services that are on Martha's Vineyard," DeSantis said.
"Why wouldn't they want to go, considering where they were? They were in really, really bad shape and they got cleaned up, everything, treated well."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters on the border with Mexico have already exceeded two million so far this year, according to agency data, with the boost in the figures due to migration from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Delaware Immigrants in the US
