Some of the illegal immigrants Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew to Martha’s Vineyard filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against the Republican governor, saying he bamboozled them into making the trip.
The migrants said they wouldn’t have made the trip had they known they were heading to the exclusive island off the coast of Massachusetts, but were enticed by a $10 McDonald’s gift certificate and false promises of what they would find when they reached their destination.
The lawsuit, filed against Mr. DeSantis and other Florida officials, says if the migrants “had known that they would be deposited in Martha’s Vineyard, or that the defendants would use them as a political ploy in order to send a message about their political views on immigration, and force photographs [of them] into the national media, [they] would not … have boarded the plane to Massachusetts.”
The lawsuit asks a federal court to order Florida to stop shipping illegal immigrants through “fraud and misrepresentation” and asks for compensatory damages for those who were already sent.
Florida flew roughly 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week, intercepting people caught and released in Texas who had planned to head to Florida, and shipping them to Massachusetts instead.
Mr. DeSantis joined the governors of Texas and Arizona, who for months had been busing migrants to the District of Columbia and other Democrat-led cities.
SEE ALSO: Texas sheriff investigating Gov. Ron DeSantis’ migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard
The red-state governors said their goal was to make other parts of the country feel the pain of the migrant surge.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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