DeSantis Wins Lawsuit Over Illegal Immigrant Flights to Martha’s Vineyard

A Leon County circuit judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the Florida Department of Transportation and a contractor did not fully comply with public-records requests about controversial state-funded flights of illegal migrants to Martha’s Vinyard in Massachusetts.

Judge Angela Dempsey last week issued two similar decisions rejecting the lawsuit that the non-profit Florida Center for Government Accountability filed in October against the Department of Transportation and Vertol Systems Company, Inc.

The center contended that the department and the contractor violated the state’s public-records law by not fully providing requested documents about the September flights of about 50 migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard. The flights, engineered by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, have drawn national scrutiny.

Dempsey concluded that the center did not prove the department and Vertol had withheld documents.

“The burden is on the plaintiff to prove they made a specific request for public records, that Vertol received the request, the requested public records exist and Vertol refused to provide them in a timely manner,” Dempsey wrote in one of the decisions. “While plaintiff meets the first and second prongs of the test, there is no evidence that the public records exist or that Vertol refused to produce public records in a timely manner.”

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