The frankly unbelievable saga involving what appears to be the legal definition of human trafficking by Florida caudillo Ron DeSantis is so deeply sad and illuminating of what has become of the Republican Party.
I see what DeSantis is doing. It's not subtle. He wants to out-Trump Trump. People have noted that he's even borrowing Trump's body language and hand gestures. Trump's salient position in 2016 was that migrants coming to this country were allying with existing minorities to create "American Carnage." As inflation recedes from everyday life for most people (or they simply become used to it) and Dobbs dominates headlines, GOP attacks have faltered. They need a new wedge and "scary immigrant caravans" are their Greatest Hit. In fact, they've been screaming about seizures at the border (of people and drugs) as evidence that there's a border crisis, when seizing drugs actually shows they are enforcing the border.
It's illogical, but it's all they've got.
They don't even have a policy solution to this make-believe crisis beyond building a wall, which is - again - just recycled Trumpism. So DeSantis gets his lapdog legislature to write a bill allowing him to ship undocumented migrants to "blue states" so that Abbott doesn't get the credit for being crueler than DeSantis. However, DeSantis has a problem: there aren't enough undocumented migrants in Florida to pull off his stunt. So he sends someone - we aren't exactly sure who - to Texas to lie to asylum seekers from Venezuela to get them on a plane to dump them on Martha's Vineyard.
First of...that's human trafficking. Deceiving someone and transporting them over state lines is a federal crime. Second, they picked asylum seekers, because there is a legal process for them to be in the country until their hearing. So the person who lied to them - some woman named Perla - knew where to find them. Third, picking Martha's Vineyard is where Obama and Clinton used to vacation, so they presumed it was where ultra powerful liberal coastal elites congregate. Fourth, they presumed that residents would freak out.
The first and second points sure seem like crimes. They lied to the migrants, wrote down false addresses that could complicate their showing up for asylum hearings and sent them far away from the hearings that were already scheduled. There's some evidence DHS agents contributed to this, and maybe they did. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just people impersonating federal agents...also a crime.
They also counted on people freaking out. And people did, because this is cruel and dehumanizing. The Right Wing Wurlitzer was suspiciously in tune, offering up a chorus of rebukes to liberals who now had to come face to face with this imaginary crisis on the border. This was a deliberate misreading of why people were outraged. It deliberately ignores the outpouring of kindness and support these migrants received in Martha's Vineyard.
"Wow, this is incredibly cruel and dehumanizing."
"See, rich liberals are racist, too."
That's just a nuts interpretation, but in so many ways this ties itself back to the closure of Rightist media in this country. It doesn't have to make sense, if you repeat it enough. "Why can't we question the election?" Dude, you did, repeatedly. No fraud was found (except occasionally by Republicans). But they will still raise questions, because they don't want to hear the answers. "If the facts do not confirm with the theory, they must be disposed of."
Now, here's the critical question for the United States as a country: Is DeSantis right? Are we likely to "get off" on immiserating these asylum seekers? Is cruelty really the point?
Ideally, Charlie Crist can turn this stunt on DeSantis and create a wedge between Republicans and Cuban and Venezuelan Americans. Ideally, DeSantis goes down to defeat and demonstrates that Trumpism is a long term loser in American politics. But that requires Florida voters to do the right thing.
We may be fucked.
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