Florida
Related: About this forumMartha's Vineyard migrant flight company, recruiter, safety czar added to class-action lawsuit ...
https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/marthas-vineyard-migrant-flight-company-recruiter-safety-czar-added-to-class-action-lawsuit-against-florida/by: Sam Sachs
Posted: Nov 29, 2022 / 01:20 PM EST
Updated: Nov 29, 2022 / 01:21 PM EST
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) A class-action lawsuit against the state of Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and other state officials by migrants taken to Marthas Vineyard, Mass. has new developments.
In addition to the state actors already named as defendants, the migrants have now added Vertol, the company contracted by the state for transportation, Vertol CEO James Montgomerie, Perla Huerta, the woman paid to recruit immigrants for the move, and Florida Public Safety Czar Larry Keefe.
In October, Huerta was identified by multiple news outlets as a former military service member living in Tampa, who retired from active duty as a a former combat medic and U.S. Army counterintelligence agent in August 2022.
The amended complaint, filed by the attorneys from Lawyers for Civil Rights, added the transportation company, its CEO, Keefe, and Huerta for their roles in the alleged deceptive recruitment of immigrants, as well as saying new public records released have painted a detailed picture of a coordinated scheme at the highest levels of the Florida government.
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lark
(24,174 posts)Hope he and they go down in flames.
Probatim
(3,019 posts)If anyone deserves a kick to the nuts, it's him.
tavernier
(13,258 posts)Perhaps one day his family members will undergo that kind of loss and pain and humiliation and he will remember what he did to those families.
Major Nikon
(36,900 posts)He paid a company that doesn't even own or manage the planes necessary for the trip $1.6 million. Even if you wanted to charter flights that go from San Antonio to Martha's Vinyard with a stop in Florida for 50 people, there's no way it would even cost a fraction of that amount.
You can charter a 737 for about $17K per hour, and that's a lot more plane than you'd need for this mission. There's about 5 hours of flight time total. Even if you throw in a couple of hours for dead heading, that's still $119K and that's easily on the high side. Florida paid almost 10 times that amount.
I find it hard to believe that doesn't rise to felony level malfeasance even assuming there was no kick back money involved, and it's pretty fucking hard to imagine there was no kick back money involved.