Photo: JUSTIN HAMEL/AFP/Getty Images
Sixteen immigrants Venezuelans and Colombians who entered the country through Texas were transferred to California on a chartered plane and left outside a Sacramento church, Gov. Gavin Newsom and immigrant rights advocates.
The young men and women were dropped off outside the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento Friday with just a backpack of belongings each, said Eddie Carmona, campaign manager for PICO Californiaa faith-based community organizing group that has been helping migrants, according to The Associated Press.
The migrants had already been processed by US immigration officials and assigned hearing dates for their asylum cases. when “individuals representing a private contractor” approached them outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, Carmona said. They offered to help migrants get jobs and get them to their final destination, she said.
“They were intentionally lied to and deceived,” Carmona said, adding that the migrants had no idea where they were after being dropped off in Sacramento.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta are investigating the incident.
Newsom said in a statement that he and California Attorney General Rob Bonta met with more than a dozen migrants Saturday and learned that they were taken from Texas to New Mexico and then flown to Sacramento on a private plane.
Bonta said that the group was carrying documents that appeared to have been issued by the state of Florida.
“State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy option, it is immoral and disgusting,” Bonta wrote.
The Newsom administration and the California Department of Justice are working together to determine who paid for the migrants’ journey and if they were deceived, given false promises or kidnapped, according to the statement from the California governor’s office.
This is a practice by the Republican governors of Arizona, Texas and Florida to protest the immigration policies of the Biden administration.
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