The migrants who were transported to Martha's Vineyard from Florida last Wednesday sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida Secretary of Transportation Jared W. Perdue, Florida and the Department of Transportation in federal court in Massachusetts.
According to the lawsuit document, it was filed by the pro-immigrant organization Alianza Americas together with the citizens identified as Pablo Doe and Jesus Doe "and all others in a similar situation."
The document accuses DeSantis of "a premeditated, fraudulent and illegal plan focused on exploiting his vulnerability" by sending 50 Venezuelan migrants from Texas to the millionaire island.
A group of migrants gather outside St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Thursday. Jonathan Wiggs/Boston Globe via Getty Images
The lawsuit claims that this strategy was designed with the "sole purpose" of defending political and economic interests.
In addition, they assure that people were victims of deception by third parties who came to offer them help, including $10 bonuses from McDonald's Corp.
"(The defendants) then made false promises and false representations that if the plaintiffs were willing to board the planes to other states, they would receive employment, housing, educational opportunities and other similar assistance upon arrival," the lawsuit states.
[The White House is mobilized by the possible sending of a plane with migrants to the area of Biden's summer home in Delaware]
Noticias Telemundo learned in recent days that several of the migrants claim a woman, whom they only identified as Perla, tricked them in the Texas city into boarding the two flights on Wednesday, promising that they would be transferred to Boston and that they would be they would speed up the procedures to obtain their work permits as asylum seekers.
The Government will investigate why a group of migrant children spent several days sleeping on buses
May 14, 202101:43
The sheriff of the Texas county of Bexar, Javier Salazar, announced on Monday the opening of a criminal investigation into the transfer of migrants to Martha's Vineyard due to the possibility that some law may have been broken after the migrants denounced the deception.
Salazar assured that the migrants were "
tempted under false pretenses"
to stay in a hotel for a couple of days, before being flown to Florida and then to Martha's Vineyard.
DeSantis defended the sending of migrants to Martha's Vineyard as a form of protest against Biden's policies: "States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals, whom they have invited to enter our country by encouraging the illegal immigration through their designation as sanctuary states,” he declared last week.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has sent more than 8,000 migrants by bus from the border to Washington DC and New York since April.