A plan linked to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to fly migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Delaware near President Biden’s home fell apart Tuesday, according to a new report.
Delaware officials and the White House said they were monitoring for the potential arrival of a plane of migrants from Texas on Tuesday. The plane, owned by a charter company hired by the state of Florida, never arrived, however.
The Miami Herald reports that an unnamed woman offered around 20 migrants a flight out of Texas to jurisdictions with more resources to help them, eventually telling them that Delaware was the destination.
But the flight was canceled Tuesday with no explanation, according to Herald interviews with the migrants, who had been staying in a hotel for five days awaiting the trip.
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“We were out in the street, and they offered us the opportunity to sleep in a bed,” Venezuelan migrant Deiker José, 19, told the Herald. “We thought they were offering to help us.”
DeSantis last week flew 48 illegal immigrants from Venezuela to the ritzy Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard.
At a press conference on Tuesday, DeSantis would not confirm he was sending a plane to Delaware.
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DeSantis has defended using state funds to fly migrants out of another state, saying that intelligence shows between a third to 40% of migrants crossing the southern border illegally are seeking to end up in Florida.
“If you can do it at the source and divert to sanctuary jurisdictions, the chance they end up in Florida is much less,” he said.
DeSantis claimed as early as April of this year that he would send illegal immigrants who are “dumped” into the Sunshine State to sanctuary states like President Biden’s home state of Delaware.
Last November, DeSantis said dozens of migrant flights had landed in Florida at the behest of the Biden administration, and he threatened at that time to send them to Delaware on buses.
Abbott has been busing migrants from the southern border to “sanctuary” destinations for the past several months.
Texas has sent at least 8,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., since April and more than 2,500 migrants to New York City since August 5, according to the Texas governor’s office’s latest figures. More than 600 migrants from Texas have arrived in Chicago since late August.
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
