Perla, please, come out of the closet and deliver us from DeSantis. Signed: Florida | Opinion
Yale-grad Ronnie isn’t so smart after all.
Not only are Florida courts chockful of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of his last round of fascist laws, but now Gov. DeSantis is being sued by three of the Martha Vineyard immigrants he wronged.
The governor also can add to his resume being investigated in Texas and Massachusetts — plus creating the most wanted woman in America.
Perla!
She’s tall, blond and speaks broken Spanish, say the immigrants she deceived and coaxed into boarding a plane in San Antonio — which stopped in Republican Crestview, Florida, to make the point that this was DeSantis’ caper to claim.
Nearly 50 vulnerable souls, including Venezuelan women and children who had been through a hellish multi-country trek, were whisked to Martha’s Vineyard last week and left on the street, stranded and confused.
That is until locals with a lot of heart swooped in to mount quite the rescue. Bravo.
Stunt backfires
Surely, DeSantis’ vile political stunt captured the nation’s attention and gave the country’s racists an instant high. But it’s also backfiring big time.
READ MORE: Venezuelan migrants file class-action lawsuit against DeSantis, Florida
Perla & Pushaw
Not only is the operation under investigation by state and federal authorities at both ends of the trip; now, the entire country wants to know: Who’s Perla?
One Latino civil-rights organization is willing to pay for the information.
The League of United Latin American Citizens — LULAC, the oldest and largest Hispanic organization in the country — is offering a $5,000 reward “for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the woman in the San Antonio area known as ‘PERLA.’
And, guess who Floridians are submitting as a suspect?
Christina Pushaw!
Tall, check. Blond, check. Broken Spanish, check.
“Has anyone shown the immigrants a picture of Christina Pushaw?” a woman who identifies as Jessica Skywalker tweeted to LULAC President Domingo Garcia, a former Texas state representative.
Yes, please show the Venezuelans her picture!
It’s not a totally hare-brained idea. DeSantis’ former controversial spokeswoman and now “rapid response director for the 2022 reelection campaign” is a notorious media-basher — and worse. She boasts that her strategy is to deny access and attack mainstream media. She cares not that needed information is kept from the public.
So I wouldn’t put it past her to instigate or coordinate a dehumanizing act against immigrants.
And DeSantis doesn’t care. So what if Pushaw were forced by the Department of Justice to retroactively register as a foreign agent for ex-president of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili? Like Trump, he likes to scandalize.
In DeSantis world, white Eastern European immigrants are welcomed in Florida. Not so Venezuelans, despite his anti-Maduro rhetoric in Miami.
Now, we’ll have to wait until Bexar County Sheriff’s Office investigators find Perla, who by now has either absconded to Mexico — or Florida.
The Texas agency is investigating because the immigrants were recruited from the Migrant Resource Center there. Massachusetts’ state attorney and U.S. federal district attorney offices also confirmed that they’ve launched a probe on their end.
Some believe that DeSantis could have committed a criminal act under a Texas unlawful-restraint law.
It may be a fantasy, but perhaps he and Perla can share a jail cell.
READ MORE: Texas sheriff will investigate Florida flying Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard
DeSantis took credit
The entire nation has seen video of DeSantis smirking like a proud peacock, taking all the credit for his shameless use of refugees fleeing left-wing dictatorships he purports to oppose to ingratiate himself with Cuban-American voters.
He’s taken a hit on Miami’s Cuban radio, and even the Republicans, quick to praise him, are now mum about what he did.
Notice that, while he’s disparaging immigrants, he no longer has at his side Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez — loathed in Miami for saying on Cuban radio that DeSantis would send Cuban immigrants to Biden’s home state of Delaware.
No, his Cuban-American sidekick during the Martha’s Vineyard press conference was Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who stood off to the side of a white, blond woman, smiling broadly every time DeSantis slammed immigrants.
Way to go Ron. But he knows he messed up.
By Tuesday, he was downplaying Martha’s Vineyard and spewing nonsense about his “interdiction in the Panhandle,” as if he were a Border Patrol agent or a Coast Guard commander, which he is not.
Yes, Perla, the woman those poor immigrants trusted, could end up turning into a new legal headache for DeSantis.
Wouldn’t that be poetic justice for all of us immigrants the governor readily insults without a care?
Perla, please, whoever you are, wherever you are, come out of the closet — and deliver us from DeSantis.
Signed,
Sane Florida
