Antelope Valley Press

State says Florida flew asylum-seekers to Sacramento

By TRÂN NGUYÉN and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

SACRAMENTO — The state of Florida picked up asylum-seekers on the Texas border Monday and took them by private jet to California’s capital city at taxpayer expense for the second time in four days, California officials said, prompting allegations that migrants were misled and catching shelters and aid workers by surprise.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials were mum, as they were initially last year when they flew 49 Venezuelan migrants to the upscale Massachusetts enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, luring them onto private jets from a shelter in San Antonio.

As California Attorney General Rob Bonta investigated the migrants’ transportation, local officials and f aith-based groups sought to provide housing, food and other resources to the more than three dozen new arrivals.

Most are from Colombia and Venezuela, and California had not been their intended destination.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, lashed out at DeSantis as a “small, pathetic man” and suggested the state could pursue kidnapping charges.

And as the migrants arrived in California, a Texas sheriff’s office announced Monday it has recommended criminal charges over the two flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year.

Johnny Garcia, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, said that at this time the office is not naming suspects. It’s not clear whether the local district attorney will pursue the charges, which include misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have previously sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, but the rare charter flights by DeSantis mark an escalation in tactics. The two groups sent to Sacramento never went through Florida. Instead, they were approached in El Paso by people with Florida-linked paperwork, sent to New Mexico, then put on private flights to California’s capital, California officials and advocates said.

Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs.

The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight Monday, Bonta said.

“To see leaders and governments of other states and the state of Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, acting with cruelty and inhumanity and moral bankruptcy and being petty and small and hurtful and harmful to those vulnerable asylum seekers is blood-boiling,” Bonta said in a Monday interview.

DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president, has been a fierce critic of federal immigration policy under President Joe Biden and has heavily publicized Florida’s role in past instances in which migrants were transported to Democratic-led states.

He has made the migrant relocaes, in tion program one of his signatureCom political priorities, using the statelocal legislative process to direct millionsthrou of dollars to it and working withDuch multiple contractors to carry out theGas. flights. Vertol Systems Co., which “It was paid by Florida to fly migrants tothous Martha’s Vineyard, appears to be be-insec hind the flights to Sacramento, Bonta Du said, adding that the migrants werecomm carrying “an official document fromthis w the state of Florida” that mentions “W the company. The company didn’t re-he sa spond to an email seeking comment. on w

Some of the migrants who arrived In Friday told Bonta they met on their$10 nearly three-month journey to thelief to United States and decided to stick to-rants gether to keep each other safe as theyedent slept on the streets in several counGr tries, he said. The group came fromganiz Colombia and Venezuela and allmuni were adults, though one woman hadabou just turned 18 on the journey, he said.throu

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2023-06-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

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