McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, on Wednesday doubled the amount of reward money it is offering for information about a woman accused of luring migrants from San Antonio onto planes bound for Martha’s Vineyard last month.
LULAC now is offering $10,000 for information that leads to the location, arrest and/or prosecution of Perla Haydee Huerta, whom LULAC President Domingo Garcia called “a migrant political predator and the prime suspect wanted in the migrant bounty ring” that led to dozens of asylum-seekers being flown from San Antonio to Massachusetts.
The flights were paid for by Florida state funds and orchestrated by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Garcia told Border Report on Wednesday that “the doubling of the reward is to encourage anyone with information to come forward and help us in locating this woman who represents an immediate danger to unsuspecting migrants.”
“The actions committed by Perla Huerta are shameful and an exploitation of innocent and desperate people,” he said.
Several media outlets, including The New York Times, have identified Huerta as a former U.S. Army combat medic and counterintelligence agent who convinced dozens of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, to board two planes Sept. 12-14 from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard by promising jobs and assistance.
“Immigrants had been dropped off in Martha’s Vineyard, literally flown in under false pretenses. They were lied to. They were tricked,” Garcia told Border Report last month after he visited with many of the migrants on the Massachusetts island.
“Conwomen and conmen tricking these poor immigrants, many of them had no money, no food,” Garcia said. “Using them as political props and I just thought that was gutter politics at its worst.”
Several of the migrants have filed a class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and other Florida state officials, accusing them in court documents of engaging in a “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme” that deceived the “vulnerable” migrants who were unaware of where they were being sent.
All of the migrants had crossed illegally from northern Mexico into Eagle Pass, Texas. They claimed asylum and were released legally by the Department of Homeland Security and had made their way to San Antonio when they were approached with the offer of free flights to Boston.
LULAC officials on Sept. 18 sent their “Freedom Bus” to Eagle Pass, Texas, and drove 32 migrants from the South Texas border town to San Antonio and put them in the care of nonprofit migrant aid groups.
Garcia said Wednesday that LULAC — the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights group — wants a grand jury and the Department of Justice to investigate Huerta.
Eagle Pass borders Piedras Negras, Mexico, and is part of the Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector, which since July has had the most migrant encounters of any sector on the entire Southwest border.
