After days of silence since the first group arrived in California on Friday, Florida officials took responsibility Tuesday for a charter flight transporting migrants to Sacramento.
The shipment has been lashed out as potentially illegal by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on Monday raised possible kidnapping charges in a Twitter message to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. was
Florida officials made no allegations that the immigrants were transferred against their will or under misleading circumstances.
Florida Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Alecia Collins characterized the two flights that arrived Friday and yesterday as “voluntary relocations.”
“These volunteers expressed through verbal and written consent that they wanted to go to California. A contractor was present to make sure they could reach a third-party NGO safely. Catholic Charities is used and funded by the federal government,” Collins said in a statement.
The statement includes a video showing more than a dozen people signing documents and sitting on a private plane. A person is then seen saying that they have arrived in California. The video includes footage of people smiling and dancing, and one man tells of his own experience migrating through Central America.
Collins said the video depicts the migration of people who are staying illegally. No city of origin or destination of the flight is specified. The Times was unable to independently verify when and where the images were taken.
Newsom’s publicist, Anthony York, strongly condemned the release of the video.
“This is exploitative propaganda being spread by politicians who have shown that there is no depth to the desperate effort to score political points,” Yorke said in a statement. “Governor Newsom said it best.
Yorke also accused the DeSantis administration of using Florida taxpayers’ tax dollars to “pump immigrants from Texas, through New Mexico, and into California to win votes in Iowa and New Hampshire.” and defamed the governor of Florida and the Republican presidential candidates who are campaigning in these important states. Republican nomination.
California officials said 16 immigrants from Venezuela and Colombia were transported from Texas to New Mexico, then chartered to Sacramento and dropped off at a church on Friday.
A plane carrying 20 immigrants arrived in Sacramento on Monday. Both groups were operated by the same contractor and had documents showing Florida’s involvement in the transport, according to California Department of Justice officials.
Newsom and Ati. General Rob Bonta pointed to DeSantis as the culprit behind the unannounced arrivals long before the state of Florida acknowledged its role. Mr. DeSantis himself has not yet commented on the flight, but he has been unusually slow to respond since similar actions last year when he arranged the transportation of immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Collins said in a statement that it was not uncommon to move immigrants across the country and suggested that Newsom’s accusations of breaking the law were hypocritical.
“According to left-wing mayors of El Paso, Texas and Denver, Colorado, the migration of people illegally crossing the U.S. border is nothing new,” she said. “But suddenly when Florida puts illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities, it becomes illegal imprisonment and kidnapping.”
