Migrants sent to Martha’s Vineyard are being rehoused in Cape Cod

VPM | By Scott Simon

Published September 17, 2022 at 12:04 PM EDT

Updated July 25, 2024

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The 50 Venezuelan migrants who were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard this week have been moved again. They’re now on a military base on Cape Cod, where Massachusetts authorities say they can be better cared for. Member station WBUR’s Simon Rios talked to several migrants, and he joins us now. Simon, thanks for being with us.

SIMON RIOS, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.

SIMON: You were on Martha’s Vineyard. What did the people there tell you about how they got there?

RIOS: So the universal story among these 50 Venezuelans – it seems they trekked from Venezuela from different parts of the country through the jungle of Panama. We’re talking kids as young as 2 to one gentleman I interviewed who is almost 70. And after presenting themselves to border officials in Texas, where they sought asylum, they were released and ended up in San Antonio. That’s where several of them told me – this is where it gets weird, Scott – they were approached by a woman who promised to get them to a sanctuary area where they’d be taken care of. It’s unclear who this person was and who she worked for, but she coordinated the flight to Massachusetts. So they knew they were coming here, but they didn’t know they were going to this wealthy, secluded island until they were on the plane. And they had no idea about the larger political story unfolding around them. I spoke to one young immigrant who wouldn’t use his name for fear of deportation. He told me he fled Venezuela for his safety. He was worried about both crime and the authoritarian government.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).

RIOS: “We were used,” he said. “We were tricked. This woman told us we’d have a place to live, monetary support. We’d be fed and even given English classes.” So now, Scott, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida says these people went to Massachusetts voluntarily. His rationale for chartering planes from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard was that Venezuelans could have ended up in Florida, and he says his state has the money to move more migrants to places considered sanctuary jurisdictions.

SIMON: Simon, these folks were sent to Martha’s Vineyard to make a point. How were they received at Martha’s Vineyard?

RIOS: There was an incredible outpouring of support. The islanders felt compassion. Many of them – I shouldn’t say all – they said the Venezuelans were being treated as pawns, and they wanted to do everything they could to help. But it also seemed absurd to pretty much everybody there that they’d come to this tiny island of 20,000 residents going into the cold season with very few jobs and almost no housing. So leading the effort to house and feed the Venezuelans for two days on Martha’s Vineyard was Lisa Belcastro. She’s the coordinator for the island’s homeless shelter. I talked to her as the migrants were being ferried to Cape Cod.

LISA BELCASTRO: Everybody had everybody’s back. And whatever you needed, you’re just like, you text someone, you call someone, or they offered, you know? And it’s like, all the organizations worked together, and the whole community came together.

SIMON: And they’re now being housed at Joint Base Cape Cod. Do we know what might be next for them?

RIOS: Look, we should say first, they’re not in custody, so they willingly were transferred to the base. And an attorney representing them who spent all of yesterday inside the base with the 50 Venezuelans – he said it’s a good situation they’re in. He felt very confident about that. That’s Ivan Espinoza, the head of Lawyers for Civil Rights in Boston. So he said being on the base will allow the Venezuelans to access medical and legal attention – you know, things they didn’t have just a few days ago.

SIMON: Simon Rios of WBUR, thanks so much for being with us.

RIOS: Thanks for having me, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Scott Simon

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.

Weekend Edition Saturday has been called by the Washington Post, "the most literate, witty, moving, and just plain interesting news show on any dial," and by Brett Martin of Time Out New York, "the most eclectic, intelligent two hours of broadcasting on the airwaves." Simon has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody, the Emmy, the Columbia-DuPont, the Ohio State Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sidney Hillman Award. He received the Presidential End Hunger Award for his coverage of the Ethiopian civil war and famine, and a special citation from the Peabody Awards for his weekly essays, which were cited as "consistently thoughtful, graceful, and challenging." He has also received the Barry M. Goldwater Award from the Human Rights Fund. Recently, he was awarded the Studs Terkel Award.

Simon has hosted many television specials, including the PBS's "State of Mind," "Voices of Vision," and "Need to Know." "The Paterson Project" won a national Emmy, as did his two-hour special from the Rio Earth Summit meeting. He co-anchored PBS's "Millennium 2000" coverage in concert with the BBC, and has co-hosted the televised Columbia-DuPont Awards. He also became familiar to viewers in Great Britain as host of the continuing BBC series, "Eyewitness," and a special on the White House press corps. He has appeared as a guest and commentator on all major networks, including BBC, NBC, CNN, and ESPN.

Simon has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian, and Gourmet among other publications, and won a James Beard Award for his story, "Conflict Cuisine" in Gourmet. He has received numerous honorary degrees.

Sports Illustrated called his book Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan "extraordinary...uniformly superb...a memoir of such breadth and reach that it compares favorably with Fredrick Exley's A Fan's Notes." It was at the top of several non-fiction bestseller lists. His book, and Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was Barnes and Noble's Sports Book of the Year. His novel, Pretty Birds, the story of two teenage girls in Sarajevo during the siege, received rave reviews, with Scott Turow calling it, "the most auspicious fiction debut by a journalist of note since Tom Wolfe's. . . always gripping, always tender, and often painfully funny. It is a marvel of technical finesse, close observation, and a perfectly pitched heart." Windy City, Simon's second novel, is a political comedy set in the Chicago City Council. Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, an essay about the joys of adoption, was published in August 2010.

Simon's tweets to his 1.25 million Twitter followers from his mother's bedside in the summer of 2013 gathered major media attention around the world. They inspired his New York Times bestseller book Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime. Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, called the book "poignant, funny, intimate, and unforgettable." Scott Turow called it "a treasure. It is as poignant and tender and wise as Tuesdays with Morrie, with the added virtues of being unflinching and, quite often, very funny." Laurie Halse Anderson just called the book, "Amazing. Breathtaking. Affirming. This book will change lives, restore hopes to the brokenhearted, and remind the rest of us what is truly important." Carlos Lozado of The Washington Post called it, in a rave review, "a book that easily matches its title."

Simon also wrote the book Just Getting Started with Tony Bennett. His latest books is My Cubs: A Love Story about his lifelong fandom of the Chicago Cubs, and their historic World Series victory.

Simon is a native of Chicago and the son of comedian Ernie Simon and Patricia Lyons Simon. He is married to Caroline Richard Simon, and their daughters are Elise and Paulina. His hobbies are books, theater, ballet, British comedy, Mexican cooking, and "bleeding for the Chicago Cubs." He has thrown out the first pitch at Wrigley Field (low and outside) and appeared as Mother Ginger in the Ballet Austin production of The Nutcracker. Scott received the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois in 2016, the state's highest honor. He adds, "If you prick me, I'll bleed Chicago Cubs blue."

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