Is That Legal? How Scores of Migrants Came to Be Shipped North

A pair of southern Republican governors this week used scores of migrants in a political stunt designed to bash Democrats about the state of the nation's immigration system.

The abrupt drop-offs left unclear what would happen to the human beings involved and raised complicated questions about how the immigration system works.

Immigration lawyers and legal observers are trying to determine if any laws were broken when Mr. Abbott dropped off nearly a hundred migrants, including children, outside the vice president's residence in Washington.

We know what we know.

The migrants who were taken to Martha's Vineyard are from Venezuela, who recently crossed the southwest border without authorization. The migrants who were dropped at the Vice President's house were from six different countries.

They were released to face future proceedings after being taken into custody. The Biden administration has used this process with almost all of the Cuban and Venezuela border crossers because they don't have diplomatic relations with those countries.

Many of the migrants will claim asylum because they fear for their lives in their home countries. Any migrant can start the process of obtaining authorization to reside legally in the United States by doing so.

Many of the migrants in the United States are living in a state of immigration limbo because of a years long process.

Once migrants have been released by border officials and served documents to appear in court, they are free to travel within the US. State governments are free to pay for travel.

According to a professor at Georgetown University, if there is evidence that the migrants were lied to by state officials about where they were going, they could pursue lawsuits for fraud.

Ivn Espinoza- Madrigal, the executive director for Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston who is representing some of the migrants sent to Martha's Vineyard, said his clients were denied their constitutional right to due process.

The Constitution forbids a deprivation of liberty if you are coerced onto an airplane and told you'll be flying to one place and directed somewhere else in the sky.

Federal agents deliberately listed incorrect addresses for the migrants, which would prevent them from getting proper notifications for their immigration hearings. It's not uncommon for a federal agent to confront a migrant who doesn't have an address in the US to list the name of a homeless shelter in their destination.

Critics have compared the actions of Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott to human traffickers, but there is no evidence that the migrants boarded the flights or buses willingly.

Migrants have been helped pay for flights and buses by nonprofits for years.

Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald J. Trump's immigration policies, embraced the plan for the government to use migrant drop-offs in Democratic cities. The move was seen by Mr. Miller and other immigration hard-liners as a way to retaliate against sanctuary cities.

Matthew Albence was the acting deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement when the idea was rejected. The agency's budget wasn't appropriated for the drop-offs.

The recent migrant drop-offs have been compared to the so-called Reverse Freedom Rides arranged by white segregationists in 1962 to retaliate against those protesting segregation in the South.

About 200 Black Americans traveled north because of the misleading jobs and housing promises made by the segregationists. The families were dropped off near the holiday home of the president.