Yesterday the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against Gov. DeSantis arguing that Florida’s flight of about 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard was unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs, which include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, filed the lawsuit Thursday on behalf of three groups in a Miami federal court. The lawsuit against DeSantis and the state’s transportation secretary contends that Florida’s program — which led the DeSantis administration to the flying of nearly 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio to Massachusetts in September — is unconstitutional because the state is “usurping the federal government’s sole role in regulating and enforcing immigration law.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the program is discriminatory and constitutes “state-sponsored harassment of immigrants based on race, color, and national origin.”

“The Constitution is clear — the sole and exclusive power to regulate immigration policy is granted to the federal government, not the states,” said Paul Chavez, senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project in a statement. “The scheme by Gov. DeSantis and the state of Florida to use taxpayer funds for the ‘relocation’ of ‘unauthorized alien’” is a blatant and unlawful attempt to harass immigrants at the state level.”

I’m not an attorney but at first glance the claim that Florida was usurping the US government’s role in immigration policy doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. There’s plenty of evidence that once the border patrol has walked migrants through the process of claiming asylum the federal government mostly takes a hands off approach to what happens next. If migrants want to catch a bus to New York or Chicago or San Francisco the federal government isn’t stepping in to prevent them from doing that, at least not that I’ve seen.

So I guess I don’t see how flying migrants somewhere is taking over the federal government’s role any more than allowing them to get on a bus or into a car. Unless these specific migrants were ordered to remain in Texas by the federal government (which they weren’t) how is this a violation of federal control of the border?

“Florida’s attempts to create its own immigration system came to a head on September 14, 2022, when individuals acting at the direction of defendants sowed chaos and confusion by fraudulently inducing approximately 50 Venezuelan and Peruvian migrants, all of whom had been processed into the US by immigration authorities, into taking a flight from Texas to Massachusetts, falsely promising them aid, jobs, and more,” the lawsuit says…

The lawsuit alleges that Section 185 of HB 5001, which passed early this year and allocated funding for the removal of migrants from Florida, is unconstitutional because it allegedly violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, which states that federal laws take precedence over state laws. It also claims that it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The claim that Florida “fraudulently” induced the migrants onto the plane seems like an angle that could be litigated but even that framing sort of assumes that the migrants had a choice about going or not. In other words, if Florida had forced the migrants onto the plane and made them go, that would arguably be Florida creating it’s own immigration system. But, again, if people choose to get on a plane (or a bus) that does not seem to be anything the federal government is preventing currently.

This is only one of four lawsuits that have been filed over this one flight of about 50 migrants. It’s interesting that this incident seems to be attracting so much more pushback than the thousands of migrants who have been transported by bus to New York, Washington, DC and Chicago. Is it because the Florida situation makes a better case? Or is it just because flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard was more offensive to the sensibilities of wealthy progressives? Alternatively, maybe it’s just because Gov. DeSantis seems more likely to run for president.