Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

Lawyers representing 30 of the 48 Venezuelan asylum seekers flown from Texas to Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard want to open a criminal investigation, claiming the victims “were tricked into boarding planes and crossing state lines under false pretenses.”

The Boston-based group Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), which represents asylum seekers on a volunteer basis, says the group, which includes women and young children, was duped into a coordinated political stunt targeting vulnerable people because of their race and of their country of origin.

“In cooperation with state officials, including the Florida governor, numerous false promises were made by individuals [to the migrants] — including job opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance — to encourage them to travel,” the lawyers explain.

Lawyers are now urging US Attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to launch criminal investigations into those behind the transport.

“We firmly believe that the perpetrators of this stunt violated criminal statutes,” LCR wrote in a letter.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker made the decision to relocate the illegal immigrants just 48 hours after they landed in the billionaire’s enclave, rattling some residents

DeSantis on Thursday sent two planes carrying 50 migrants to the wealthy island and is now threatening to send more to Delaware — following Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “blueprint.”

The Boston-based group Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), which represents asylum seekers on a volunteer basis, says the group, which includes women and young children, was duped into a coordinated political stunt targeting vulnerable people because of their race and of their country of origin

“This cowardly political ploy has put our customers at risk. Upon arrival scores of people had to be taken to hospital for medical attention. Some now have immigration hearings thousands of miles away as early as Monday,” the lawyers added in a statement.

“They took advantage of the vulnerability of our customers — many of whom had suffered deep trauma in their home countries and during their travels to the United States — and exploited that vulnerability to gain trust through false promises,” she added.

The migrants were only told after they were on their way that their destination was Martha’s Vineyard and not the city of Boston.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the migrants knew exactly where they were going because they previously signed a waiver.

The migrants have since been relocated to Joint Base Cape Cod on the mainland.

The 50 migrants who arrived in Martha’s Vineyard have now been taken 32 miles away to a military base in Cape Cod

Immigrants were staying at St Andrews Episcopal Church in Martha’s Vineyard late last week. Some refugees played soccer in front of the church today. Some left the church with new clothes and sneakers

The JBCC joint base, where the migrants are now being taken, houses five military commandos who are being trained for missions at home and abroad and has been used as a hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic

DeSantis could still feel some political fallout from the episode as Florida is home to the largest contingent of Venezuelans in the US

Local community leaders have accused the governor of trying to score political points.

Sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is one of several actions implemented in recent months by Republican governors of leading southern border states, many of whom have bused thousands of migrants into Washington DC, New York and Chicago.

DeSantis could still feel some political fallout from the episode as Florida is home to the largest contingent of Venezuelans in the US

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent 11,000 migrants to shelter cities and states, including 8,000 to DC and 2,500 to New York City.

At least 600 migrants from Texas have also been transported to Chicago since late August.

Similarly, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has brought nearly 2,000 migrants to DC

Much of the intent is to highlight the Biden administration’s ineffective hold on the immigration crisis, especially ahead of the November midterm elections, where immigration will be a key issue that will weigh on voters.

Around 50 migrants were busted from Texas in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ home on Saturday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a Friday news conference that Abbott and DeSantis used migrants “as political pawns and treated them like chattels.”

Democrats say the strategy only creates added stress for the migrants, who often try to reunite with relatives already in the country while awaiting their own immigration hearings.

The White House has condemned the Republican governors’ efforts, saying the migrants, mostly from Venezuela, are being used in a political stunt.

“They were children. They were mothers. They fled Communism. And what did Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott do to them? They used them as political pawns, treated them like chattels,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news conference Friday.

She said: “This is an inhumane and abominable problem and we should not use people, migrants, fleeing communism as a political pawn.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has promised that Ukraine will not back down in its fight to regain territory lost to Russia.

Sunday’s pledge came as the UK said Russian forces would step up raids on civilian infrastructure, and a senior US general warned it was unclear how Moscow would respond to its battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.

Zelenskyi said Ukrainian forces would keep up the pressure on Russia.

“Perhaps it seems to some of you now that after a string of wins, we’re in kind of a lull now,” he said in his late-night video address. “But this is not a break. This is the preparation for the next series… Because Ukraine has to be free – everything.”

Ukraine’s military said its forces repelled attacks by Russian troops in the areas of the Kharkiv region to the east and Kherson to the south, where Ukraine launched counter-offensives this month, as well as parts of neighboring Donetsk. It was said that Ukrainian troops had advanced to the east bank of the Oskil River in the Kharkiv region.

“Since yesterday, Ukraine has controlled the east bank,” it said on Telegram.

Serhiy Haidai, governor of the neighboring Luhansk region, said this meant that the “de-occupation” of his region was “not far off”.

As Russian shells hit towns and cities over the weekend, Britain’s MoD warned that Moscow was likely to step up attacks on civilian targets as it suffered battlefield defeats.

“Over the past seven days, Russia has stepped up attacks on civilian infrastructure, although it is unlikely to see an immediate military impact,” the ministry said in an online briefing. “Faced with setbacks at the front lines, Russia has likely broadened the range of attacks to try to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government.”

US Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, called for vigilance after visiting a base in Poland supporting Ukraine’s war effort. His comments recalled the risks of escalation as the US and its NATO allies help Ukraine from afar.

“The war is not going so well for Russia right now, so it’s incumbent on all of us to maintain a high state of preparedness and alert,” he said after his trip to the base, which reporters traveling with him were not asked to identify.

Putin, warn Biden

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repelled Ukraine’s rapid counter-offensive, saying Moscow will respond more vigorously if its troops continue to be pressured.

Such repeated threats have raised concerns that Putin may eventually turn to small nuclear weapons or chemical warfare.

When asked what he would say to Putin if he considered using such weapons, US President Joe Biden replied in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes: “No. Not. Not. It would change the face of war like it had not since World War II.”

Some military analysts have said Russia could also stage a nuclear incident at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which is held by Russia but operated by Ukrainian personnel. Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling the power plant, which damaged buildings and cut power lines needed to keep it cool and safe.

Police and experts are working on a mass grave site discovered after Russians were pushed back by Ukrainian forces [Gleb Garanich/ Reuters]

A senior Vatican envoy reportedly came under fire in the city of Zaporizhia on Saturday while helping to distribute humanitarian aid there. The incident forced Vatican Almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski and others to take cover, Vatican News Service said on Sunday. No injuries were reported.

“For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where to walk. Because it’s not enough to run, you have to know where you’re going,” said the Polish-born cardinal, whose office makes charitable contributions on behalf of the pope.

Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, reported that large parts of the country continued to be shelled.

Russian fire on Saturday killed four medics trying to evacuate a psychiatric hospital in the Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Two patients were injured in the attack in Strelecha, he said.

Night shelling also hit a hospital in Mykolaiv, a major Black Sea port, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said. And Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region over the past day killed five civilians, and in Nikopol, further west, several dozen apartment buildings, gas lines and power lines were hit, according to regional governors.

Separately, the pro-Russian separatists, who control much of Donetsk, accused Ukraine of shelling a POW colony in Olenivka, saying one prisoner was killed and four wounded in the attacks.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify the battlefield reports.

“still scared”

In areas retaken by Russian troops, returning Ukrainians searched for their dead relatives.

In Izyum, where Ukrainian officials said they found 440 bodies at a forest grave, Volodymyr Kolesnyk tried to match numbers on wooden crosses with names on a neatly handwritten list to locate relatives he said had died earlier this year were killed in an air raid war. Kolesnyk told Portal he got the list from a local undertaker who dug the graves.

“They buried the bodies in sacks, without coffins, without anything. I wasn’t allowed here at first. she [Russians] said it was taken down and asked to wait,” he said.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Kharkiv accuse Russia of torturing civilians in a recently liberated village. In an online statement, they said they found a basement where Russian forces allegedly tortured prisoners in Kozacha Lopan, near the border with Russia. In pictures they released, they showed a Russian TA-57 military phone with extra wires and alligator clips attached. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using the Soviet-era cellular phones as a power source to shock detainees during interrogations.

The Ukrainians’ claims could not be immediately verified.

Elsewhere in the region, residents of towns recaptured after six months of Russian occupation have returned with a mixture of joy and trepidation.

“I still have this feeling that at any moment a shell could explode or a plane could fly over it,” said Nataliia Yelistratova, who traveled 80 km (50 miles) on a train from Kharkiv to her hometown of Balakliya, um, with her husband and daughter to find their block of flats intact but devastated by shelling.

“I’m still scared to be here,” she said after spotting a piece of splinter stuck in a wall.

Hilton, a member of the Socialism and Freedom Party, argued that the far-right leader abuses economic and political power, using the position to promote his missionary action as an “obvious political bargaining chip.”

“He even uses guards to prepare the position he will take, to contest the election and not be arrested if he loses,” in the October 2 elections, the city council published on the social network Instagram.

On Sept. 13, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) barred the ex-military from using images of the Sept. 7 bicentennial commemorations of the South American giant’s independence, which took place on Sept. 7, in its campaign propaganda.

The seven members of that court upheld the decision of Judge Benedicto Gonçalves, who vetoed the use of the material, arguing that the use of these audiovisual media would give the Liberal Party plaintiff an advantage over the other candidates for power.

For the TSE, the use of images of the official celebration in propaganda tends to damage equality by “believing that the presence of thousands of people on the esplanade of the ministries (in Brasilia) to commemorate the civil date would result electoral mobilization in support of the candidate for re-election”.

The court analyzed the actions of the campaign by two of the candidates: former Labor Party president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Unión Brasil lawyer Soraya Thronicke.

Campaign addresses by the former army captain marked the bicentenary of independence, which after two years in this capital and in Rio de Janeiro launched a civil-military magazine.

The parade of troops and other forces, such as police, returned for the commemoration after being suspended in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Gazeta do Povo newspaper, Bolsonaro’s advisers understand that his presence in London this Monday will help in the election campaign. The same applies to the trip to New York, where he will deliver the opening speech at the 77th UN General Assembly tomorrow.

Elizabeth II, the longest-serving British monarch in history to have reigned for 70 years, died on September 8 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, aged 96. Her eldest son, who became King Carlos III. was appointed, succeeded her to the throne.

Brazil is in the midst of a tense election campaign that officially began on August 16, with Lula comfortably ahead of the president in all opinion polls.

rgh/ocs