DeSantis Under Fire for Reportedly Hiring Illegal Immigrant to Coordinate Migrant Flights Stunt

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) is under fire after a man who claims to have coordinated his effort to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard was revealed to be an illegal immigrant himself.

The man, a Venezuelan national, said he was paid $700 to recruit people willing to board to airplanes from San Antonio to the Massachusetts resort island. Paying someone who is in the country illegally for work is explicitly banned in Florida.

On Friday, a 27-year-old named Emmanuel told the Miami Herald he took cash payments from a state contractor to help coordinate the flights. The paper reported:

[Emmanuel] was recruited by Perla Huerta, a 43-year-old former U.S. Army counterintelligence agent working for Vertol Systems Company — which has been paid more than $1.5 million by the DeSantis administration to execute the [migrant relocation operation]. Emmanuel ended up receiving three cash payments totaling $700 from Huerta for his work on behalf of DeSantis’ relocation program, he told the Miami Herald.

Text messages reviewed by the Herald corroborate his account.

Reporters for the Herald concluded Emmanuel’s reported role in the political effort to relocate migrants to majority Democratic states puts DeSantis at odds with his own views on migrant labor.

Ana Ceballos and Sarah Blaskey, who broke the story, wrote:

Such compensation would appear to be a blemish on the governor’s public stance against the hiring of undocumented immigrants, and could present a compliance issue with an immigration law that DeSantis campaigned on in 2018, championed as governor in 2020 and continues to tout as he runs for reelection in November.

Contractors who are hired by the state are required to vet their employees or subcontractors to ensure they are eligible for work in Florida.