Asylum Seekers File Class Action Against DeSantis for ‘Illegal’ Martha’s Vineyard Stunt

A trio of Venezuelan asylum seekers who, after surrendering to U.S. officials for processing upon arrival at the border, were tricked into being flown with 50 others to Martha’s Vineyard, filed a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, state Transport Secretary Jared Perdue, and a handful of unnamed accomplices. In the suit, the three say they were lured in by two people “trolling streets outside of a migrant shelter in Texas… pretending to be good Samaritans.” The migrants—most of them fleeing extreme food insecurity—were offered, among other things, $10 McDonald’s gift cards in what the suit describes as a “premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme” to whisk them across state lines. “Plaintiffs have led lives inflicted by violence, instability, insecurity, and abuse of trust by corrupt government officials that most Americans could hardly conceive of,” the lawsuit states. “They fled to the United States in a desperate attempt to protect themselves and their families from gang, police, and state-sponsored violence and the oppression of political dissent... [They] are vulnerable in a way and to an extent that almost defies verbal description. They are as deserving of dignity and empathy as anyone among us.”