Alejandra Martinez, director of the Crossroads Mission in Nogales, didn’t think much about the two men who arrived last week offering brochures about a program called My Bright Horizon, which offers “free relocation support” and transportation for migrants in the United States. “I was busy,” she said, working at the nonprofit’s homeless shelter. “They said they could help migrants get to their final destinations. And that they’d be in touch and send us more brochures in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. So, I put some of the brochures out at our shelter.”
Mohammad Abdollahi, who works for another Nogales nonprofit, said he was suspicious, however, when the two men approached him last week and said they were offering free transportation, and lodging to migrants. “I asked them where their funding came from. They told me they didn’t know,” he said. “They said they were based out of Tucson.”
The My Bright Horizon brochure features a smiling couple holding what look like dark blue U.S. passports. An 800 number appears on the back, along with a customer-care website and email address. But there’s a tell: the brochure cites Florida law. My Bright Horizon, it turns out, is not a new Arizona nonprofit trying to help asylum seekers who have been processed by Border Patrol. It is, rather, the latest phase of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s controversial flight program to transport migrants into Democratic-led states, an effort that elected officials and immigrant rights groups have called a “cruel political stunt.”
In February 2023, Florida’s Republican-majority state legislature approved $10 million for the expansion of DeSantis’s migrant-flight program, which would allow him to transport people anywhere in the United States. Since the so-called Illegal Alien Transport Program began in 2022, when DeSantis made it a political priority in his slate of anti-immigrant initiatives, criminal charges and complaints have piled up against the program in states including California and Texas. The brochures in Nogales appear to be the first time that DeSantis’s controversial program has been documented in Arizona.
In June 2023, the sheriff of Bexar County filed criminal charges of unlawful restraint after 49 migrants said they were tricked into flying from a shelter in San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. California’s governor Gavin Newsom threatened to file kidnapping charges against DeSantis after several migrants were flown by private jets from El Paso, Texas, and New Mexico, and left at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, the state’s capital, without prior notice. “They’re human beings used as pawns for a guy’s political advancement. That’s pretty sad and pathetic,” Newsom told NBC News.
DeSantis defended the Florida-funded flights to California, saying, “These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem—because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open border policies,” according to CBS News.
“This is the first I’m hearing about these brochures,” said Sobeira Castro, director of Santa Cruz County’s Emergency Management office, who organizes transport for asylum seekers already processed by Border Patrol. Castro said she was unaware of My Bright Horizon touting its services in Nogales to provide “free” and “voluntary” air and bus transport to migrants. “It has nothing to do with us and the local government,” she said. “But I can tell you it sounds very fishy to me.”
In 2023, DeSantis and his allied legislators placed the program under the direction of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, which, after a bidding process, chose three contractors in June. The program’s services and financial amounts are detailed in public records, which were released to the media and public watchdog groups but are heavily redacted. They provide little information about the total costs of contractors’ services.
My Bright Horizon is a subsidiary of Access Restoration Services, based in Conroe, Texas. The other two vendors are GardaWorld and Vertol Systems; the latter has already been paid more than $1.5 million for flights to Martha’s Vineyard. According to a lawsuit, and criminal charges filed by the Bexar County sheriff, asylum seekers were recruited under false pretenses in an operation organized by Perla Huerta, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence officer. The operation drew further scrutiny after it was discovered that Vertol Systems had close political ties to DeSantis.
It’s unclear how much Access Restoration Systems, which is part of a larger Canadian company called Global Emergency Management, is being paid for the contract. But ARS’s proposal mentions $150 an hour during the development phase of its services. In an email, an ARS spokesperson directed all media queries to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. But the division did not respond to requests for comment. A call to the My Bright Horizon’s 800 number was answered by an operator from a third-party answering service who said someone from the organization would call back shortly, but no one ever did. In the Q&A section of the program’s Request for Proposal, vendors are said to be responsible for recruiting people to participate in the flights. “Division anticipates this contract to be ‘turnkey,’” it reads, “which means vendors will locate and identify, vet and verify individuals for program eligibility and transport.”
The Q&A mentions states where people might be relocated, including New York, California, and Georgia.
My Bright Horizon might have a tough time finding enough people to fill a flight. In June, President Biden issued an executive order further restricting asylum access. And due to enforcement in Mexico, the asylum restrictions, and other factors, arrivals at the border have sharply declined, including in Nogales. Border Patrol encounters in theTucson sector are one-third of what they were a year ago.
Castro said her city is seeing very few migrants other than people who have gone through the CBP One program. “Right now, Border Patrol is deporting maybe 98 percent of the people who try to cross,” she said. “And the ones that are being released, they have a sponsor, and they are able to leave.”
After learning that My Bright Horizon was part of DeSantis’s controversial program, Martinez said she would remove the brochures from the shelter. “We don’t work with that many migrants,” she said. “But I don’t want to be referring anyone, and instead of helping them out, especially if they’re migrants, we could be actually hurting them. Because they don’t know what’s going on here. They don’t know the law, and everything is new to them.”
Abdollahi added, “It’s pretty crazy that they’re using Florida taxpayer money to do this, especially in Nogales. Nogales is one of the safest cities in the United States. This whole thing is just manufactured.”
Valeria Fernández, managing editor of Palabra, contributed to this report.
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