Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to litigate his case against Martha’s Vineyard, contending the community “virtue signaled” and thus earned it the recent migrant flights paid for by the state of Florida.
During a “Don’t Tread on Florida” event in Port St. Lucie, DeSantis again contended the community must have wanted the migrants’ presence given its policies.
“No human is illegal. All are welcome on the island,” DeSantis continued. “They had a social services office that said everyone can come. That’s what they said. That’s what they virtue signaled.”
DeSantis repeated another claim that isn’t true, though the audience didn’t mind.
“Martha’s Vineyard said that they are a sanctuary,” DeSantis reiterated, a claim described as “misleading” by independent fact checkers given the whole island is not a sanctuary, just individual communities.
“They should go to sanctuary states and jurisdictions. We’re not a sanctuary state in Florida. I couldn’t accommodate it if I wanted to,” DeSantis joked. “I’ve got enough refugees coming in from blue states fleeing that bad policy.”
DeSantis justified the expenditure of state funds by making an emotional appeal about cities near the Mexican border.
“Think about it: These border towns are poor, most of them are poor. And they’re getting overrun with thousands of people. They don’t have the infrastructure,” DeSantis contended, though it is uncertain why Florida taxpayers would have any concern about border town “infrastructure.”
DeSantis has for weeks offered quotable comments defending the stunt, increasingly shifting the blame to Martha’s Vineyard for the state’s decision to induce Venezuelan migrants to board a plane from Texas to Massachusetts under false premises.
The Governor blamed Martha’s Vineyard “advertising” for the migrant flights in comments to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week.
“They said they wanted this, they said they were a sanctuary jurisdiction,” DeSantis said on Sept. 20 on the same platform.
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