California Officials Investigating Flight of Migrants to Sacramento
Sixteen migrants from Venezuela and Colombia were abruptly flown on a private chartered jet to California and dropped off outside a Catholic church building in Sacramento on Friday, state officials said, prompting an investigation into whether they were transported from outside a Texas migrant center under false pretenses.
While it remained unclear on Sunday who had approached the group of migrants outside El Paso and orchestrated their flight from New Mexico to California, the episode mirrored an aggressive tactic used by hard-line Republican governors to protest President Biden’s immigration policies by dispatching dozens of migrants to Democratic-led states and cities with little warning or explanation. Many of the migrants told a nonprofit organization they had no idea they were going to California.
On Sunday, a spokeswoman for California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the migrants were carrying documents that mentioned the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the state’s “voluntary transportation program.” The documents also named Vertol Systems Company Inc. as the contractor for the Florida program and the one carrying out the transport.
That was the same company used for transport in the fall when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida directed two planeloads of South American migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, a Democratic-leaning Massachusetts island.
Source: The New York Times
