A federal judge on Monday tossed part of a lawsuit accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of malfeasance when he flew illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.
The court said migrants could still pursue claims against the charter company that operated the flights.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs did have stern words for the governor and the others, saying that if they actually did what the migrants claimed, it would be “nothing short of extreme, outrageous, uncivilized, intolerable, and stunning.”
But she said there’s no evidence Mr. DeSantis or his employees were involved in the conduct at issue in Massachusetts, so they weren’t appropriate targets for a lawsuit filed in her district.
“Accordingly, Plaintiffs have failed to show that personal jurisdiction exists over the Individual State Defendants, Huerta and Montgomerie, and thus the Amended Complaint is dismissed without prejudice as to those Defendants,” the judge wrote.
Lawyers for the migrants vowed to fight on, saying they’ll look for other opportunities to sue Mr. DeSantis.
For now, their lawsuit can proceed against Vertol Systems, the charter company that won the state’s contract for transporting the migrants and flew the migrants into Massachusetts, where the migrants say illegal activity took place.
The case stems from Mr. DeSantis’s unabashed decision to fly 50 migrants, most of them Venezuelan, from Texas to tony Martha’s Vineyard, famously the playground of wealthy Democrats.
His goal was to keep them from heading to Florida.
He was escalating a tactic pioneered by Texas and Arizona, both of which were taking some of the migrants surging into their states and bussing them out to other Democrat-dominated jurisdictions like New York City and the District of Columbia.
The move by Mr. DeSantis, who at the time was seen as a major GOP presidential contender, shook the immigration debate.
Three of the migrants transported sued, saying they felt duped by the governor’s operation.
They argued false imprisonment and said they were “abandoned and humiliated in a publicity stunt” meant to elevate Mr. DeSantis’s political profile.
Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is handling the migrants’ case, said they consider Judge Burroughs’ ruling to be a victory, but insisted they aren’t through with Mr. DeSantis.
“All other defendants have been dismissed, but only for now. The dismissal is ‘without prejudice’ — meaning that the claims may be reasserted and reinstated,” the group said in a news release. “To be clear: the Martha’s Vineyard migrants will not stop here.”
They celebrated Judge Burroughs’ stern rhetorical spanking of Mr. DeSantis’s operation, where she said she saw “no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them into a divisive national debate.”
Florida has become a prominent player in the border chaos. It is a premier destination for new unauthorized migrants, particularly those from Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela, who are coming to join already large expat communities.
A new report Monday from the Center for Immigration Studies found Florida was the overwhelming destination of illegal immigrants taking advantage of one of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s “parole” programs.
This one allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to schedule their arrivals in advance as long as they bypass the border and fly into an airport, and as long as they secure agreement from someone in the U.S. to financially support them.
The Washington Times reported last month that the financial support documents are being sold for $5,000 apiece.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.