TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Vertol Systems has until the end of next June to run through the $12 million approved by the Legislature for what critics have called a “political stunt” — relocating as many migrants as it can from Florida to other states and the District of Columbia, records released late Friday show.
The request for bids, quotes from vendors, emails and other related documents show that Destin-based Vertol Systems beat out two other vendors for the operation, which so far has resulted in sending 48 migrants on two planes to Martha’s Vineyard and an apparently scrapped flight to Delaware.
The information was released after a public records request made last month by the Orlando Sentinel.
While the records from the Governor’s Office and Department of Transportation don’t include a contract with Vertol Systems, it provides a request for bids and project guidelines that outline the vendor’s duties and responsibilities. The plans call for identifying and relocating people out of Florida with the help of state and local law enforcement.
They also provide memos from Vertol Systems to DOT officials showing how the company raised the cost of transporting the migrants from $220,000 for up to 48 people from Crestview, Florida, to Boston, Mass., to $615,000 for up to 50 people, mostly Venezuelans, who were flown out of San Antonio, Texas.
The final cost for that would have worked out to be $12,300 per migrant.
The people weren’t rounded up or flown out of Florida, as the project scope required. Nor did Vertol Systems coordinate with state and local law enforcement to identify people who were in Florida illegally.
They were recruited on the ground in San Antonio by people working for Vertol Systems, one of whom was a former military intelligence officer the New York Times has identified as Perla Huerta of Tampa, who nobody has managed to contact. The League for Latin American Citizens has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to locating, arresting and prosecuting her.
Vertol received $615,000 on Sept. 8 for the first two flights, which on Sept. 14 originated from San Antonio, a hub for migrants seeking asylum and other federal aid to gain entry to the U.S. legally.
Both planes touched down in Crestview in the Florida Panhandle briefly before ultimately arriving at Martha’s Vineyard, a resort island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Their arrival set off a firestorm of critics, who accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of human trafficking and breaking the law that allowed him only to remove migrants in Florida to other states. DeSantis has defended his actions, saying he was trying to get so-called “sanctuary states” to share the burden of migrants crossing the southern border.
State Sen. Jason Pizzo has sued the governor, alleging that the program violates state law because the migrants were not being moved from Florida. The budget language allocating the $12 million said it for “the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law.”
On Sept. 20, another flight was planned out of San Antonio for an airport near the vacation home of President Biden in Delaware, flight records show, but apparently was called off after the sheriff in San Antonio launched a criminal investigation into the flights. Vertol Systems received another advance payment of $950,000 on Sept. 19, presumably for that flight.
The governor’s office did not respond to an email Friday night asking when the next flight was scheduled.
Asked why the relocation program wasn’t taking migrants out of Florida, DeSantis said at a news conference in September that so few migrants were coming to Florida, his administration had to go to other states to find people who might potentially want to come here.
“If I could do it all in Florida, I would,” he said. “But if we just ignore the source we are going to have people trickling in five, 10 a day ... and there is no way to track all that because it’s on such a small scale.”
There are plenty of places in Florida where undocumented migrants live and work in large numbers, said Neil Rambana, an immigration attorney from Tallahassee who specializes in deportation cases. They work in construction, the hotel and restaurant industry, pick tomato, sugar cane and orange crops, and even work on hurricane restoration and debris removal.
“He could have gone anywhere from Pensacola to Key West,” Rambana said. “It’s everywhere.”
