we heard about this woman from all of them. we talked to over a dozen immigrants here between myself and cnn espanol. and this woman named pearla, a couple people were asking if they needed help, if they wanted a job. once they agreed, they would take them to a hotel, they held them there until the planes came. and then they were off. the planes landed twice on the way here from texas. no one got off or on and then they ended up in martha s vineyard. and so, you know, who this person is, we d certainly like to know. so a murky beginning to these 50 or so migrants ending up here on martha s vineyard. still so many more questions. ly gmiguel marquez, thank you. and cnn is learning new
to blue areas. the legality of this exploitive act is also underreview. one immigration attorney says that if the migrants were actively deceived, it could actually involve a type of human trafficking. and there s some evidence of deception. npr reports that the migrants were, some of them told they were just going to go to boston. and these migrants, many of them not even from florida. they came from san antonio, texas. one says that they were paid $200 by a woman, they were told her name was pearla, don t know whether that s, of course, her real name, and they were told to recruit others for this relocation. so, what on day one looked like just a very sick tucker carlson/ron desantis collab is now looking more like something that could at least involve a legal review or a criminal investigation. you can t just lie to people who are in a vulnerable state and use government resources to put
providing food and pearla was trying to recruit more passengers hours before their flight. one migrant from venezuela says pearla offered help, help that never arrived. now we are here. and we have been on the plane with a vision of the future, of making it, and look, when you have no money and someone offers help, well, it means a lot. we got on the plane because of a promise of help. they received none from governor desantis. only cameras. joining us now is julian castro, former mayor of san antonio, texas, and secretary of housing and urban development in the obama administration. mr. secretary, plchlgt mr. mayor, thank you so much for being with us. goods to be with you, alex. so you were the former mayor of san antonio, we have some reporting that the bus load of migrants traveled first through san antonio and then eventually martha s vineyard from a mayoral municipal level, what does it mean to have bus loads of migrants arriving in your city with no heads up and no action pl
i know you re trying to talk to these people to see why they got on these flights to martha s vineyard. reporter: we ve also been trying to find this mystery woman by the name of pearla who allegedly recruited all these migrants to get on this flight. so we ve retraced her steps. let me take you through this because what you see beyond the trees, that s the migrant resource center here in san antonio. and we ve watched this happen all day long. migrants cross that busy street that you see behind me, and they go to the shopping centers that are all around me here. now i ve been collaborating with my colleague because she s been getting photographs and also videos of this woman named pearla and the steps that they took along the way. we ve been reconnecting some of those dots. and turns out this is the parking lot where this woman pearla met with all of these migrants. and, remember, this is the woman
who promised these migrants that they were going to have shelter and also a job whenever they got to their final destination. now right now you don t see a lot of migrants here. but take a look at this video because we were here all day long earlier today. there was lots of migrants here. i was able to talk to them. no one had seen pearla. no one knew about pearla. they re only allowed to stay for three days at this migrant center. nobody had heard of pearla. but we kept on retracing her steps. turns out these migrants were transported about 17 miles southwest of this location to a hotel. we ve got video of this. we asked people at this hotel if they knew about pearla. they had not. but, again, we have pictures and video to prove that that s where the migrants were. the migrants stayed there for about five days. after that they were transported