A Democratic Florida state senator filed suit Thursday to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis from using state funds to cover the cost of his controversial migrant relocation program, saying the Florida Legislature did not give him the authority to use the money to transport migrants from other states.
In his 15-page lawsuit, filed late Thursday in Leon County Circuit Court, state Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, alleges the DeSantis administration failed to meet the requirements set by the Florida Legislature to only transport “unauthorized aliens” from within the state. The suit also alleges that the Florida Department of Transportation failed to properly bid the contracts to vendors to provide the migrant transportation services.
Named as defendants are DeSantis, Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared W. Perdue.
“The state is completely violating the law,” Pizzo told NBC News. “They haven’t provided any scintilla of evidence for how this is legal.”
In a statement to media outlets on Thursday night, DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske said “Senator Pizzo never misses an opportunity for his 15 minutes of fame and is challenging an action on an appropriation he voted for.”
Money for the migrant relocation program was included as part of the state’s massive $109 billion budget, which was unanimously approved by the Florida Senate.
The suit comes more than a week after DeSantis, who is widely considered a top 2024 Republican presidential candidate, drew national media attention when he ordered two planeloads of nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants to be flown from Texas to the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard, with a fueling stop in northwest Florida.
The move angered Democrats, immigrant advocates and others who said the Republican governor was using migrants as “political pawns. DeSantis said he took the action to call attention to President Biden’s “reckless” border security policies and steer undocumented immigrants away from Florida.
DeSantis did not notify any local or federal authorities about the migrant flights to Massachusetts.
The Venezuelan migrants are not here illegally because they were “paroled” into the U.S. as asylum seekers and allowed to remain pending the outcome of their cases in immigration court.
DeSantis said the state hired a contractor in south Texas to seek out migrants who may be headed to Florida. He has said he wants to identify more migrants in Texas and take them to “sanctuary jurisdictions” around the country.
At a news conference in Miami, DeSantis said his migrant relocation program is the “most effective” way to steer asylum seekers and other migrants away from Florida.
The price tag for the Massachusetts flights was initially put at $615,000, but the latest state records show that Florida paid another $950,000 to the Vertol Systems Company, a Destin, Fla.-based aviation firm, bringing the total spent so far to more than $1.5 million to move nearly 50 migrants.
The DeSantis administration has not publicly released the contract with Vertol Systems.
I as a republican can only pray that when we take the house, senate and the presidency that the republicans will never stop the law suits from coming at thise hateful nasty angry two-faced demo demons. Time to remove them all even if we need to fill the prisons with them.