SACRAMENTO, Cal. – California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened Gov. Ron DeSantis with kidnapping charges on Monday on Twitter.
Newsom, a Democratic businessman and a former mayor of San Francisco, also referred to DeSantis, who recently launched his official campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential candidate nomination, as a “small, pathetic man.”
The friction followed the case of asylum seekers who reported that after U.S. immigration officials released them with a court date in Texas, a group of strangers took them to New Mexico where they boarded flights to California.
Amid an investigation into flights that arrived on Friday and Monday, Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta reported the migrants turned up at The Catholic Diocese of Sacramento.
“It’s just heartbreaking that having come to the United States that they would be treated in that fashion, that they would be deceived,” Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto later told reporters outside of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.
Bonta also reported that the migrants “were in possession of documentation” that appeared to be from the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Before DeSantis launched his campaign on Twitter, he signed a law funding the relocation program that started with two flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Vertol Systems, an aviation company based in Destin, is one of the state contractors involved.
The original flights resulted in a federal lawsuit on behalf of the migrants by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit organization, alleging the relocation had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin.
The organization announced on Monday that a legal team had responded to Sacramento.
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Related audio: (May 23)
- Sept. 16, 2022: State spent $615K to fly migrants to Massachusetts
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