Hillary Clinton (Yale Law School 1973) said on MSNBC that sending 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, was “literally human trafficking” by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Harvard Law School ’05).
MSNBC co-host Joe Scarborough (University of Florida Law School ’90) accused DeSantis of using innocent people as political pawns.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (Harvard Law School ’95), suggested that DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (Vanderbilt University Law School ’84) should send more migrants to blue cities and states.
Cruz, pointing to the millions of illegal immigrants that President Joe Biden’s administration has admitted, bused and flown around the nation, called Biden (Syracuse University College of Law ’68), a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, “the biggest human trafficker on the face of the planet.”
In turn, Biden demanded that Abbott and DeSantis stop their “un-American” political stunts.
Clinton, Scarborough and Biden have support from like-minded lawyers. Professors from Notre Dame, Georgetown and other universities, along with civil rights advocates, came down hard on the pair.
The harshest criticism came from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who requested that the Justice Department open an investigation into the Martha’s Vineyard flight on charges that the migrants were “kidnapped.”
Move along, nothing to see here, just angry lawyers going after each other hammer and tongs.
The voting public, however, is grappling with a contradiction. If the Biden administration can order the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to put thousands of aliens on buses and planes to send them throughout the interior of the United States, then the same flexibility should apply to the governors, assuming, of course, that the migrants agree to be flown to Martha’s Vineyard or driven to New York or Washington, D.C.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley provided his perspective, writing that to call transporting aliens kidnapping is “to take a flight from one’s legal senses.”
On his blog, Turley stated that human trafficking, a legal term, is altogether different than moving humans in traffic. The governors’ actions aren’t an attempt to put humans, through fraud, coercion or force, into peonage, involuntary servitude or sex slavery.
In conclusion, he wrote that many objections could be made to the governors’ transport programs, but not kidnapping and human trafficking.
The tensions between the states and the cities are just beginning. DeSantis promised to fly more migrants to other sanctuary cities, but not necessarily Martha’s Vineyard. That way, he explained, the sanctuaries can “put their money where their mouth is.”
A possible 2024 presidential candidate, DeSantis may sense that while some American voters support immigration, they object to Biden-style open borders.
Political expediency is at play in Texas, too. Abbott is up for re-election in November, and he’s counting on removing illegal immigrants as integral to his victory.
The border invasion is expensive. As part of its $4 billion Operation Lone Star program, Texas has installed more than 42 miles of concertina wire along its southern border near Eagle Pass and Del Rio, two communities through which millions have passed.
A potential roadblock — a boulder, really — may stand in the governors’ way.
In a statement, the nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights promised to investigate “the inhumane manner in which they (the Martha’s Vineyard migrants) were shipped across the country, to determine the responsible parties, whether state or federal criminal laws against human trafficking and kidnapping were violated, and what other legal remedies are available.”
Even though no evidence exists that the migrants were treated inhumanely, and as Turley warned, trafficking and kidnapping are specious charges, the Boston law firm will press on. The legal advocates hope to gather pro bono attorneys, immigration experts, law enforcement and social services providers.
If that’s not enough, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco confirmed that the Justice Department is reviewing inquiries like Newsom’s calling for an investigation.
The department’s involvement, inevitable in the Biden administration, especially if Abbott and DeSantis escalate, would be the end of the line for the governors’ strategy to give sanctuary cities a tiny taste of their own medicine.
Not a single voice among the many urged border enforcement.
— Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated columnist writing about immigration and related social issues. A California native who now lives in Pittsburgh, he’s a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.