'Using people fleeing desperate situations as political props and exacerbating their distress is cruel and dehumanizing.' Those responsible for such behavior must be held to account.
Several Republican governors have been rounding up migrants and asylum seekers, families in many cases, most if not all in the country legally as they await immigration proceedings, and shipping them by bus and plane to “liberal” cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, DC. This state-sponsored internal displacement, intended to embarrass the Biden administration and inflame the Republican base, is racist, repugnant, and potentially criminal.
The Reverse Freedom Rides of 1962 were launched in response to the Freedom Rides, when activists rode buses into the Deep South to challenge the segregation of interstate bussing still being enforced there. The Freedom Riders were met with hostility, violence and jail from white Southerners, but their efforts achieved significant attention and genuine gains.
“As we understand it, 48 migrants were lured — and I will use the word ‘lured’ — under false pretenses into staying at a hotel for a couple of days,” the sheriff said at a news conference on Monday. “They were shuttled to an airplane, where they were flown to Florida and then eventually flown to Martha’s Vineyard, again, under false pretenses”