Elie Mystal: Let's Call DeSantis's Migrant Stunt What It Is--Kidnapping

[Nevilledog]

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Elie Mystal
@ElieNYC
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Shipping migrant to communities ill prepared to welcome them as a political stunt is evil. But is it illegal? I make the case for the @TheJusticeDept to stop them, because people like DeSantis never stop being cruel voluntarily.
My latest in @thenation

thenation.com
Let’s Call DeSantis’s Migrant Stunt What It Is—Kidnapping
It's a crime to dupe somebody and then ship them across state lines—and it's time to hold GOP governors accountable for doing just that.
8:09 AM · Sep 16, 2022

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/desantis-kidnaps-migrants-marthas-vinyard/

My late father immigrated to the United States in the 1970s, from Haiti. Like many Haitian immigrants, he first came to New York City. Queens. He came as a teenager with his mother and two younger siblings. One day, when he had been here for around six months, he was playing soccer in Central Park. The coach of the Denver University soccer team happened to be in the park on vacation that day and saw him play. The coach offered him a scholarship to DU on the spot, or so the story goes. My dad, who barely spoke the language at that point, accepted. He thought “Denver” was somewhere in New Jersey. When he showed up at the airport some weeks later, he had no idea that he’d be traveling 2,000 miles away from his family and friends, to the mountains.

By the time I knew my dad, it was a funny story, one of those family origin tales that dazzles folks at cocktail parties. I didn’t really get what happened to him until I went off to college myself. Can you imagine being deposited in a strange town, full of strange people, thousands of miles from where you started in a country that is bigger than you could reasonably imagine, not being fluent in the language, carrying only the vague promise that the strange people were going to be nice? My dad was incapable of showing fear, at least to me. But I can only imagine that he must have been so, so scared.

This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shipped two planeloads of migrants, mainly from Venezuela, to Martha’s Vineyard. The 50 migrants, including children, had apparently been staying in a shelter in San Antonio, Tex., when they were offered transport to Boston. They were first flown to Florida, then North Carolina, and finally the posh New England vacation spot. DeSantis is just the latest Republican governor to treat human beings as pawns and ship them around the country in an attempt to score political points. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott has been shipping migrants to New York; Washington, D.C.; and Vice President Kamala Harris’s house.

I do not know why treating brown people like unwanted garbage so titillates the Republican MAGA base. I do not know how white media pundits at major publications and outlets can refer to this situation as a “policy debate.” I do not know what the specific defect is in the MAGA Republican psyche that allows them to order, authorize, or support forced or coerced relocation as one option among many. All I know for sure is that treating children as sub-creatures who can be bused cross-country for the sole purpose of trolling the opposition party is what makes Abbott and DeSantis the actual sub-creatures. This… stunt… is monstrous, and anybody who supports or both-sides it is either a monster themselves or far too comfortable with monstrosity for my taste.

*snip*

[SheltieLover]

1. Absolutely!

[crickets]

2. K&R ❤️

[panader0]

3. That's what I said yesterday:

https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17158520

[Bucky]

4. I don't know if it's kidnapping, but it's definitely criminal fraud.

And absolutely every public employee, including any federal agents involved in registering these migrants' addresses at homeless shelters around the country need to be fired and prosecuted.

[brer cat]

5. K&R

[Sneederbunk]

6. Human Trafficking.

[Jade Fox]

7. K & R

[Blue Owl]

8. K&R for visibility

[Blue Owl]

9. And let's call DeSantis what he is

A depraved sicko driving around in a windowless white van offering kids candy