ORLANDO, Fla. — Delaware officials were preparing Tuesday for a possible unannounced wave of migrants sent by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to land at an airport less than 20 miles from the vacation home of President Biden near Rehoboth Beach.
One of two planes that flew 48 mostly Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last week was scheduled to leave San Antonio on Tuesday to Delaware Coastal Airport in Georgetown, Delaware, according to FlightAware, an aviation-tracking website.
But as of early afternoon, the status of the flight was unknown.
“Our teams at (Delaware Emergency Management Agency) and (Delaware Department of Health and Social Services) are working with community organizations and other partners to make sure that migrants who arrive here have the support that they need,” Emily David Hershman, a spokeswoman for Democratic Gov. John Carney, told the Delaware News Journal.
Delaware officials said they had no information about the passengers on the plane but were instead responding to reports of its flight plan.
Asked about DeSantis, a Republican, possibly sending migrants to Delaware, President Joe Biden responded: “He should come visit. We have a beautiful shoreline.”
At a news conference in Bradenton, DeSantis said he could not confirm that the new flight was carrying migrants to Delaware.
Because so few people were coming to Florida, he said, his administration has to go out to other states to find people who might potentially want to come here.
“If I could do it all in Florida I would,” he said. “But if we just ignore the source we are going to have people trickling in five, 10 a day ... and there is no way to track all that because it’s on such a small scale.”
The same contractor that organized last week’s operation, Vertol Systems, an aviation consultant based in Destin, Florida, has been paid $950,000 by the Florida Department of Transportation for two more flights to relocate “unauthorized aliens.”
DeSantis’ office did not respond to requests for comment, a day after the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office announced a criminal investigation into the first transfers carried out by the governor.
Bexar Sheriff Javier Salazar revealed the criminal probe, saying the original group was “lured” to the planes in his county with false promises of jobs and other benefits.
Appearing on Fox News with commentator Sean Hannity on Monday night, DeSantis did not address the investigation. Instead, he launched an attack on President Biden’s immigration policies at the southern border.
He said the flights last week were “clearly voluntary and all the other nonsense you are hearing is just not true.”
DeSantis spent $615,000 in taxpayer money to charter the two jets and other expenses for what his critics have called a possibly illegal “political stunt.”
The funds were among the billions of dollars sent to the state by Congress for COVID-19 pandemic relief. DeSantis was authorized by the Legislature to spend $12 million of that pot of money to move migrants out of the state, not from other states. The Department of Transportation was put in charge of the program and was supposed to seek two bids before awarding the contract.
Those two irregularities prompted state Democrats to ask Republican leaders of the Legislature to bar him from using the funds.
While DeSantis calls them “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” the sheriff and others have pointed out the migrants from Texas were in the U.S. legally awaiting hearings seeking asylum.
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