A year ago, 49 migrants arrived unexpectedly on Martha’s Vineyard. Immigration advocates called it a cruel political stunt, but it has surprisingly created a legal advantage that some of the migrants might be able to use to remain in the United States.
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A journey continues: migrants reflect one year after being flown to Martha's Vineyard
CAI | By
Eve Zuckoff
Published September 14, 2023 at 5:00 AM EDT
LISTEN • 4:43
Raquel C. Zaldívar
New England News Collaborative
Carlos Luzardo sits on the front steps of his home in the Boston suburbs, on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. Luzardo is one of the 49 migrants that were flown to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.
A year ago, 49 migrants
arrived unexpectedly on Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy island community off the Massachusetts coast. Immigration advocates called it a cruel political stunt, but it has surprisingly created a legal advantage that some of the migrants might be able to use to remain in the United States.
Among them was Carlos Luzardo, who worked seven years as a barber after moving to Colombia from his native Venezuela. After living through a
political crisis and then economic upheaval, he sold his business and decided to migrate to the U.S.
“It was a difficult decision,” he said earlier this month, speaking through an interpreter.
In the last year, the stocky, gregarious 25-year-old has been slowly building a new client base in the kitchen of his apartment in a Boston suburb. To earn more money, he works in a salon washing hair, waxing eyebrows, and simply talking with people. “I spend an hour with them, fixing them up. And just like that, they find me endearing. I’m not sure why,” he added with a smile.
Raquel C. Zaldívar/
New England News Collaborative
Luzardo recently bought a clippers and scissors to cut hair. He is currently working in a salon, but hopes to be a barber with his own clients soon.
Luzardo takes home about $600 a month. It’s all under the table while he awaits legal work authorization. But he’s been able to buy a pair of clippers and good scissors, while helping to support his mother and girlfriend back in South America.
“[I’ve] sent a little to my family,” he said, “not [as much as] I want to, but I have helped them.”
The migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, most originally from Venezuela, say they were
tricked into boarding planes in Texas under a false promise of expedited work papers and housing. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has since taken credit for what he’s called a
“voluntary” relocation. Many of the migrants, Luzardo among them, have painted a very different picture.
Arriving on Martha's Vineyard
When the migrants disembarked the two planes that brought them to Martha’s Vineyard, Luzardo said, they were almost immediately left alone to wander.
But islanders, after gathering enough information to realize these people needed help,
quickly jumped in.
Leaders from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Edgartown offered two buildings as shelters. One housed men, the other women and children. High school students studying AP Spanish started translating. Beds, food, and toys were made available,
then even more: access to a dentist, to lawyers, to soccer balls.
Amidst the frenzy of media coverage that sprang up around them, many of the migrants started sharing their stories with volunteers and reporters. They said they’d been told they were going to Boston or New York, among other places, that were set up to receive them. When they realized this wasn’t true, they said they felt
lied to, duped, used.
“From the beginning I knew this was something sponsored by the government, but it was something that was not right,” Luzardo said. “But I didn’t react against it because I saw how well we were being treated and cared for.”
Many migrants were still processing these feelings when they voluntarily left the island and were
transported to dorms at Joint Base Cape Cod, where Massachusetts officials concluded there would be more infrastructure in place to accommodate them.
Raquel C. Zaldívar
New England News Collaborative
Carlos Luzardo holds a keepsake rock from Martha’s Vineyard in his home in a Boston suburb one year after he arrived on the island.
Almost immediately, critics accused Republicans involved in the flights of violating human trafficking laws. Law enforcement officials in Texas, Massachusetts, and elsewhere took notice.
Legal Situation for Migrants
“There are at least three investigations going on into [the migrants’] plight,” said Muzaffar Chishti of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
He said millions of Venezuelans fleeing their homes have filed asylum claims in the U.S. But in a twisted kind of irony, the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard are not only able to apply for asylum, but also a special kind of visa, called a U Visa, that could secure their spot as permanent residents.
U Visas are reserved for victims of certain crimes who help law enforcement in their investigations.
“The sheriff of Texas has this investigation about whether these people were criminally abducted to the United States,” Chishti said. “That’s enough predicate for a U Visa.”
Luzardo’s lawyer, Stephanie Marzouk, said she is pursuing that approach for him.
“[The migrants] believed that they were going to one place, and in fact, they were sent to a totally different place for a political stunt,” Marzouk said. “So that's a crime that these people had committed against them. And there are visas for people who are victims of certain crimes in the U.S. and who aid in the prosecution of those crimes.”
As Marzouk and Chishti said, a significant benefit for Luzardo is that it doesn’t matter whether the investigations result in any convictions. Their mere fact is enough for him to receive a U Visa.
Ultimately, the pair agreed, the men, women, and children flown to Martha’s Vineyard have stronger cases than most migrants now in the United States.
Also of note, Chishti said, the Martha’s Vineyard migrants get to file their claims not in
Texas where they crossed the border, and where there are large numbers of applicants, but in Massachusetts.
“[It’s] a reasonably immigrant-friendly jurisdiction where there's a lot of lawyer support and a lot of political support,” Chishti said.
Luzardo's Long Journey
Luzardo said he left Colombia for the United States on July 16, 2022, embarking on a harrowing journey full of violence and chaos that left him with virtually nothing.
“I carried what I had mostly in my mind. And I was determined to make it out,” he said.
On the first part of the journey, Luzardo said, he
passed through the Darién Gap, a dangerous rainforest that straddles Colombia and Panama. He badly injured his knee, but continued on.
Over the next few months, he said, he traveled through eight countries. He was robbed and lied to. He narrowly avoided poisonous spiders, kidnapping, and death, on multiple occasions. He said he watched women get attacked and a man stabbed to death.
Raquel C. Zaldívar
New England News Collaborative
Carlos Luzardo stands in the doorway of his apartment on Sept. 12, 2023. Luzardo was one of 49 migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard a year ago.
Finally he crossed the U.S. border into Texas penniless, with three items: his cell phone, its charger, and the wallet that held his identification card.Shortly after, he found himself at a shelter in San Antonio, where another migrant approached him with high hopes.
“I befriended this guy who said, ‘You know, there's this woman who I heard helps people find a shelter state.’”
Luzardo said
the woman, named Perla, offered him pizza and a few nights at a hotel before giving him a paper to sign. (The woman has since been identified as Perla Huerta, a former U.S. Army medic, who has been named in a federal class-action lawsuit filed in Massachusetts on behalf of the migrants that also seeks damages against DeSantis. The case is pending.)
“It was this sort of authorization that we had to sign where we had to basically affirm that we had accepted this arrangement.”
But Luzardo said he didn’t understand what it meant. The next day she told him to be ready to go to the airport.
Immigration advocates say it’s almost impossible to understand why a person would willingly board a plane with so little information, without understanding the desperation that person was feeling. Luzardo said he believed he had to accept help whenever it was offered because that was the only way he’d survived up until that point.
