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The Miami Herald has gotten the first state documents from Gov. DeSantis’s migrant shipment operation. You can see its report here. The actual documents are here and here.
I’m going through the documents now. Want to join me? Tell me what you find by email. Two things have jumped out at me so far. One is that the contract seemed to put the state on the line for pretty top dollar to spend on flights. $325,000 to fly 8 people. I don’t book a lot of private jets but isn’t that a lot? The State of Florida paid $615,000 just for the Vineyard flights. So just for 40-some people. That’s a huge amount of money.
And then there’s something else.
Remember the on-going Perla mystery? The paperwork also notes that in addition to the flights, Vertol (the GOP-wired contractor) would be responsible for “the facilitation of the relocation of up to fifty individuals.” This was specifically for “Project 1,” which was the Martha’s Vineyard flights.
Now, that language can be interpreted in various ways. But it sounds to me that that likely refers to Vertol finding the immigrants to ship. In other words, responsible for Perla and her crew.
I’ll continue to update in this thread as I find more.
Late Update: So I’ve done a bit more scanning through these documents and wanted to share a few more thoughts. There’s not a lot there. Apparently The Miami Herald, which first got the documents under Florida’s version of FOIA, is still waiting on a lot of stuff the state should turn over.
From these documents though it does appear that the state of Florida likely contracted with Vertol Systems to recruit migrants in Texas. It doesn’t say that explicitly. But there are various references that seem to allude to this kind of full-service approach.
One of the two documents is a “Program Guidelines.” This lays out the kind of project that the state legislature seems to have originally conceived of. Basically a charter contractor that is on standby to work with state and local agencies who through whatever lawful means have found unauthorized migrants who are willing to be transported out of the state of Florida. Very bureaucratic. Very standard sounding language.
Then there’s a proposal dated August 2nd from Vertol which seems to offer roughly those kinds of services outlined in the proposal. But on September 6th there’s a specific work order (“Memorandum For Record”) which details a more specific plan. This one is specifically for flying migrants to “Massachusetts or other, proximate northeastern state”. This document also includes the language about the “facilitation of the relocation” of the migrants.
This seems at least a bit different from what’s outlined in the original memos and proposals in which the carrier is just on standby to fly out migrants which the state of Florida has come up with within Florida. Now Vertol seems responsible for the recruitment. There’s no mention of Texas but there’s also no really mention of Florida (as the source of the migrants) either.
These are all interpretations of fairly elliptical language. So consider it provisional waiting on new info.
