The Reverse Freedom Rides

Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers were flown across the country and unceremoniously deposited on Martha's Vineyard last year. Florida governor Ron DeSantis had paid contractors to recruit those people for the flights. In another echo from the segregationist reverse freedom rides in the 1960s, those contractors allegedly used a mix of bribes, lies, and coercion to induce people to get on board. The immigrants say the recruiters told them that food and shelter and jobs would be waiting for them. But unlike the reverse freedom rides, which sputtered out after a few months and a couple of hundred people being duped into it, now the transporting of undocumented immigrants north is still going on.