A handful of migrants stand outside of St. Andrews Episcopal Church on September 15. Two planes of migrants from Venezuela arrived suddenly Wednesday night on Martha’s Vineyard.
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Attorneys representing Martha’s Vineyard migrants said they plan to sue the ex-Army agent reportedly involved in the flights.
Perla Huerta, a former counterintelligence agent, convinced migrants to board the planes, the New York Times reported.
Dozens of migrants were flown to Martha’s Vineyard last month in a move orchestrated by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Attorneys representing a group of migrants among the dozens who were flown to Martha’s Vineyard by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Monday they intend to sue the ex-Army counterintelligence agent who reportedly helped arrange the flights.
A woman named Perla Huerta, who served as a combat medic and counterintelligence agent in the US Army, was identified by The New York Times and CNN as an on-the-ground recruiter who allegedly helped convince some of the nearly 50 migrants to get onto the planes.
The migrants, mostly from Venezuela, arrived unannounced on two chartered planes from Texas at the upscale liberal Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard on September 14.
Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit, has filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of a group of the migrants alleging that DeSantis and other Florida officials carried out a “scheme to defraud vulnerable immigrants to advance a political motive.”
The lawsuit says a woman, identified as “Perla,” and a man, identified as “Emanuel,” waited outside shelters in Texas to offer migrants gift certificates to McDonald’s and tell them about the transport, “pretending to be good Samaritans offering humanitarian assistance.”
Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of the lawyer group, said in a statement on Monday that the nonprofit plans to amend its lawsuit to substitute “Perla’s” real name as a defendant in the complaint once the group has verified she was involved.
“She will then be formally served with the complaint and required to respond in federal district court,” Espinoza-Madrigal said.