During a September 16 news conference, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said transporting immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, would be "just the beginning" of efforts to relocate those crossing the country's border.

That week, DeSantis chartered two flights transporting immigrants from Texas to the island home to luxury resorts in Massachusetts. The immigrants are mostly Venezuelan. This initiative is similar to Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott's decision to transport immigrants to Democrat-led cities such as Washington, DC, New York and Chicago.

At the press conference, DeSantis stated: “Now we see, in New York and D.C., they used to beat their chests when Trump was in office, saying they are sanctuary jurisdictions. Then the minute Texas starts busing there, they get very bent out of shape about it. These are just the beginning efforts. We got an infrastructure in place now. There is going to be a lot more that’s happening”.

DeSantis further stated that these efforts are helping “put this issue on the front burner,” adding that Florida is using $12 million the state budget allocated to a program to transport migrants out of the state.

“The governor claimed most of the migrants, who were in Texas prior to the journey to Martha’s Vineyard, were trying to get to Florida. Florida itself is home to a large Hispanic population”, according to The Hill.

“So they’ve been in Texas, identifying people that are trying to come to Florida, and then offering them free transportation to sanctuary jurisdictions”, DeSantis said, adding there will be more buses and flights for migrants in the future, according to the same publication.

Faced with allegations that the migrants were misled about their destination in the country, the governor of Florida claimed that they all signed forms and received packages with maps of Massachusetts. However, according to a report in The Hill, reports have emerged that immigrants on Martha's Vineyard thought they were heading to Boston and are now looking for alternatives to be able to attend their scheduled dates in immigration court in Texas.

Democrats accuse these initiatives as inhumane. The White House has compared the transport of migrants to human trafficking and, according to a statement by the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, DeSantis and Abbott are using migrants as political pawns, “treated them like cattle in a cruel, premeditated political stunt”.