Sheriff Javier Salazar, who pushed for a criminal case to be pursued, called the decision “regrettable.”
SAN ANTONIO — The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that it wouldn’t pursue criminal charges after about 50 migrants were taken by plane from San Antonio to an island off the coast of Massachusetts in September 2022, a flight which sparked scrutiny by officials who claimed the migrants were lured under false pretenses.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s office had filed unlawful restraint charges and submitted its case in the spring of 2023 in connection with the incident. Now, after more than two years of scouring evidence, the DA’s office said it wouldn’t seek prosecution of those in San Antonio alleged to have coordinated the flight, citing a lack of evidence.
“As prosecutors, it is our sworn duty to bring charges only when the facts of the case support them,” Bexar County DA Joe Gonzales is quoted as saying in a release. “In this particular instance, we diligently reviewed what was filed and determined there was not enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that would result in a successful prosecution.”
The group of migrants, which included children, were mostly from Venezuela and flown out of San Antonio on the morning of Sept. 14, 2022. Sheriff Javier Salazar said days later that his agency was investigating reports they were lured away from the Migrant Resource Center and lied to about the journey to Martha’s Vineyard that was to come.
“They were promised work and solutions to several of their problems,” Salazar said at the time, adding that instead “they were unceremoniously stranded.”
Records showed that the operatives who recruited the migrants likely used information they learned from Texas officials to recruit refugees outside the Migrant Resource Center for the flight. One of those operatives and Larry Keefe, Florida’s public safety czar at the time, talked of celebrating their “productive” visit to Texas with wine.
A month later, migrants said that operative contacted them outside the resource center. When she located enough refugees to fill a charter plane, records show she texted Keefe “Yahtzee!” The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) even stepped in, offering a reward to find the recruiter, who the organization called a “migrant political predator.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chartered the flight, at a time when Republican governors – including Greg Abbott of Texas – were bussing and flying thousands of migrants to Democrat-run cities amid strong national debate over security at the southern border. Joe Biden was president at the time.
According to an analysis of the case provided by Gonzales’ office, prosecutors on his team found that two people identified by BCSO as suspects did approach recently arrived migrants about being taken to “sanctuary cities up north, including places like Washington D.C., New York City, Boston and Philadelphia” while promising that they’d find food, shelter and work.
But, the DA’s office continued, those efforts were ultimately “non-violent and absent of intimidation, fear or coercion.” While “no one at Martha’s Vineyard was aware of their impending arrival,” the analysis stated, “it is entirely plausible and reasonable” that those suspects expected the migrants to find help in the form of “goods, services and opportunities” upon arriving in a “sanctuary state.”
And, the DA’s office found, the suspects’ efforts were ultimately found to be “non-violent and absent of intimidation, fear or coercion.”
Salazar on Wednesday called Gonzales’ decision “regrettable,” adding that “BCSO is on the right side of history in this case.”
“These people were preyed upon and mistreated based on their race/nationality, and all for the sake of a political statement,” the sheriff said in a statement.
This is a developing story.