But as she stood outside an immigrant shelter in Texas this week, she struggled to navigate where to go and what to do next. Agents had told him he couldn’t work, but a man approached him offering a free flight to Washington, plus housing and a job. Garcia, 27, a carpenter, was a suspect. “To me, it was a false promise,” he said. Immigrant leaders say efforts by GOP governors from Florida and Texas to bus and fly new arrivals to places like Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and D.C. have created an added layer of confusion among immigrants and stoked fears that they are forced by misleading offers to go. elsewhere-somewhere else. The city of San Antonio — where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chartered flights to transport 50 migrants out of state this week — said Saturday it was advising migrants “not to accept rides or any other assistance from strangers” outside the Resource Center Immigrants. Some of those who took the DeSantis flights say they were approached by a woman named Perla near the shelter. The city said signs have been posted that provide a national human trafficking hotline number. The shelter can accommodate 700 people and has served more than 24,000 migrants since it opened in July, with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Administration through December. However, Catholic Charities is taking over the operation from the city on Monday after the group’s chief executive Antonio Fernandez raised concerns about the recruitment of migrants to the site under false pretenses. Fernandez said he plans to install security cameras and has instructed staff to be on the lookout for recruiters who stay outside. “I’m worried. Who was recruiting them? I don’t really know,” he said. “It shows what the system is like: They can get them anywhere by lying to them.” The agency has hired 145 staff, plans to remove the center’s three-day stay limit and offer more services. They will also rename it a “Centro de Bienvenida,” or welcome center, and offer food, clothing and case management. Fernandez said the shelter will not host buses provided by Gov. Greg Abbott. Other immigrant advocacy groups are also jumping in to step up vigilance. The Union of United Latin American Citizens posted “Wanted” fliers in San Antonio shelters with a $5,000 reward for “information leading to the positive identification, arrest and conviction” of Perla, the migrants said, who approached them outside the city shelter. The group’s national president, Domingo Garcia, said nine Venezuelan migrants on Martha’s Vineyard on Friday told him they spoke with Perla before boarding the flights. “He promised them that they would be paid for three months of work. Under immigration law, he is here on parole. They have a court date. It is illegal for them to work. So he entices them to work, which is a federal crime. It tempts them to break the law,” Garcia said. Garcia said all the migrants crossed the Rio Grande and were apprehended near the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, before traveling to San Antonio. His group is sending volunteers to Eagle Pass this week to educate immigrants about their rights, he said. They also plan to put up immigrant billboards along I-35 outside of Eagle Pass and San Antonio, he said, “Warning of the unknown danger with people offering jobs and free transportation that are not legitimate refugee services.” Other advocates have raised concerns about how immigrants in places like Cape Cod, Mass., will navigate their cases from afar. Rachel Self, a Boston attorney who helps immigrants, said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released immigrants with forms falsely stating they would be staying in homeless shelters from Washington state to Florida and then told them to check in to nearby immigration offices as soon as he arrived. He said the DHS forms, and Florida’s decision to dump them on Martha’s Vineyard, left immigrants “terrified” of missing mandatory appointments and being ordered deported without a hearing. In an interview Saturday, Self said immigration attorneys were able to get extensions for the immigrants to check in with immigration officials and were trying to find lawyers to defend them against deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which represents the government in deportation proceedings, did not respond to requests for comment Saturday. Homeland Security officials dismissed any notion of wrongdoing, saying Saturday they had nothing to do with the states’ transportation efforts and did not know which immigrants had been taken to Martha’s Vineyard or what their forms said. Officials said the immigrants must register a US address before being released and check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) until their cases are resolved. Any information in the forms is based on what the migrants told authorities, officials said. Officials also said they are giving migrants electronic devices with instructions to use them to quickly update their new addresses to avoid missing appointments. DHS conducts background checks on immigrants before releasing them to local shelters, nonprofits, or city agencies for help finding housing or transportation. DHS officials criticized Republican governors for failing to coordinate the arrival of buses and planes with state and local governments. “DHS employees work around the clock to enforce our laws, process immigrants and care for those in detention. Unlike these governors, they are not in the business of using vulnerable men, women and children as props for a political stunt,” said DHS spokesman Luis Miranda. He said attorneys have also requested a criminal investigation into the Florida flights and expect legal action to be filed in federal court “to prevent this from happening again.” He said advocates are also warning immigrants in Texas and other border states to be cautious about accepting rides and to avoid scenarios that sound “too good to be true.” “They are preying on a vulnerable population,” he said of the people who recruited the immigrants to the Vineyard. “There was a lot of misrepresentation here.” Republicans defended the action, saying border towns saw influxes in even greater numbers. Federal border agents have made nearly 2 million arrests at the southern border this fiscal year, surpassing last year’s total. Busloads of immigrants from Texas to Washington continued Saturday: About 50 immigrants, including a one-month-old baby, arrived at Vice President Harris’ residence. The bus Abbott sent dropped off the migrants, mostly Venezuelans, outside the Naval Observatory on Saturday morning. The Texas governor also sent three busloads of migrants to New York on Saturday. Advocates for immigrants at the border were trying to make sure immigrants were better informed about their rights and travel options, but said there were limits to what they could do. Tiffany Barrow, The director of operations for the Val Verde Humanitarian Coalition in Del Rio, Texas, said she had “great concerns” about the Martha’s Vineyard flights, they called them “deceptive.” “There is nothing transparent about how this operation was done,” Barrow said. She said her team is “building awareness of these kinds of possibilities into our orientation.” But it doesn’t discourage immigrants from taking the free buses provided by Abbott. “Ultimately the migrants decide if it’s right for their needs,” he said, noting that the day shelter in the tiny border town, “can only do so much. Immigrants are with us for such a short time. Often less than half an hour… wherever the final destination is, it makes a lot of sense to bring together this kind of in-depth help.” The Rev. Gavin Rogers said volunteers from Travis Park Church’s Corazón Ministries are trying to help migrants they meet at the downtown bus station, but “political agents are finding people to recruit migrants to travel.” “It’s really a form of human trafficking,” he said. “We’re trying to tell people to follow what’s on their asylum paperwork, get to the city they need to go to,” to contact federal immigration officials. “Ironically, immigrants need transportation. The governors of Texas and Florida are so close to helping — if they would just look at the piece of paper that says where they need to be.” Venezuelan immigrant Mike Betancourt Vivas was outside the city’s shelter Saturday, trying to find a ride to Washington state. He had crossed the border at Eagle Pass, but never saw the state buses. If he had the choice, he said, he would take one. “We need a way to get directly to our destination. People here are closing the door and not giving us opportunities, just like other countries like Panama and Costa Rica,” he said. Betancourt, 26, a construction worker and composer with a wife and two daughters stuck in Colombia, said he wasn’t interested in being a political pawn if offered a free ride to Washington. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I just want to go.”
