Sixteen immigrants from Venezuela and Colombia were abruptly flown on a private chartered plane to California and left in front of a Catholic church building in Sacramento on Friday, state officials said, prompting an investigation into whether they were transported from outside a detention center. immigrants from Texas under false pretenses. .

While it was not clear Sunday who had approached the group of migrants outside El Paso and orchestrated their flight from New Mexico to California, the episode reflected an aggressive tactic used by hardline Republican governors to protest policies. of President Biden’s immigration by sending dozens of migrants. to Democratic-led states and cities with little warning or explanation. Many of the immigrants told a nonprofit organization they had no idea they were going to California.

On Sunday, a spokeswoman for California 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 provider of transportation.

That was the same company that was used for transportation in the fall when Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida directed two planeloads of South American immigrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, a Democratic-leaning Massachusetts island.

Representatives for DeSantis, a Republican who has made immigration a major issue in his campaign for president, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On the campaign trail, he frequently highlights his decision to send immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

Mr. Bonta and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, met with the migrants on Saturday and vowed to care for them while they remained in the state and to begin an investigation into how they were brought to California and whether they were misled. . In separate statements, both men did not rule out the possibility of filing criminal or civil charges for those involved in transporting the migrants.

The state, along with the city of Sacramento and local nonprofit organizations, will work “to ensure that the people who have arrived are treated with respect and dignity, and arrive at their intended destination while they process their immigration cases,” Newsom said. it’s a statement. statement. Several nonprofit organizations in Sacramento also confirmed that they had spoken with the migrants.

The 16 migrants were accosted outside a migrant center near El Paso by people who said they were there on behalf of a private contractor and could help them get to a center where they would receive assistance with finding jobs, housing, clothing and other needs. , according to state and nonprofit officials.

The migrants were then transported to New Mexico and taken on a chartered flight to Sacramento, where they were taken to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. Abandoned outside a church administration building, the migrants had backpacks with their belongings, little information about where they were and the promise that someone would come looking for them.

“Those I have spoken to feel that they have been lied to; some of them have said they were abandoned,” said Cecilia Flores, who works with the Sacramento ACT, a community organization. “They couldn’t understand why someone would do something like that.”

The group, he said, did not include children and appeared to be made up of young women and men under the age of 40 who had gathered outside the migrant center. Many of them were seeking asylum in the United States, but none of the migrants, that she knew of, intended to go to Sacramento.

Sacramento ACT and other organizations are working to find them safe housing and help them with their next steps. Several of the immigrants have court dates in other parts of the country.

“We’ve all made the comment that this is something we’ve never seen or expected,” Ms. Flores said. “Another big question is, is this going to keep happening?”

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, said he was “encouraged” by the investigation, adding that “whoever is behind this needs to answer.”

The episode is at least the second time in recent months that migrants have been transported to Sacramento from Texas. In September, a smaller group of Venezuelans who had crossed the border in Laredo, bound for New York, Florida and Utah, showed up in front of a Catholic Charities building in the California capital.

They had documents directing them to local US Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, but officials were unable to determine who sent them. Several had walked the 10 miles from the Sacramento International Airport, some without shoes.

Data of reported flight, a website that tracks flights across the country, shows a nonstop flight between Deming Municipal Airport in Luna County, NM, and Sacramento’s McClellan Airport that landed Friday just before 11 a.m. after about three hours. A representative of Berry Aviation, a charter service based in San Marcos, Texas, told The Sacramento Bee that the flight was “something that the government ran,” but had no further comment.

Vertol, the company that allegedly brought the migrants to Sacramento, is an aviation company and defense contractor based in Destin, Florida. He has ties to Republican leaders in Florida, as well as one of Mr. DeSantis’ top aides, Larry Keefea former US attorney who previously represented the firm in lawsuits and later headed the state’s migrant flight program. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)

Like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican who sent migrant buses to Washington and New York last year, DeSantis made sure to send dozens of South American migrants to a Democratic-leaning state in an effort to draw attention to an influx of migrants at the southern border at the time. Mr. DeSantis pointed to Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama has a vacation home, and considered a separate flight to a airport near Mr. Biden’s home in Delaware. (That flight to Delaware was cancelled.)

The 49 migrants on the Martha’s Vineyard charter flights, operated by Vertol, said they were tricked into boarding the planes with promises of help that would be waiting for them when they landed. But no one on the ground knew they were coming, prompting local officials to scramble to provide food and shelter and sparking a fierce reaction across the country.

The migrants, many of whom were among the millions of people who fled a devastating economic crisis in Venezuela, later sued DeSantis and other state officials in a lawsuit that is still pending. Those flights cost at least $1.5 million in taxpayer money, state records show.

But Mr. DeSantis and his Republican allies in Florida have since doubled down. Lawmakers voted to expand the state’s migrant flight program this year, authorizing a $12 million budget, and the state recently hired three private contracting companies, including Vertol, to organize the program.

Mr. DeSantis is scheduled to hold a $3,300-a-plate fundraiser in Sacramento on June 19 and has traded public critiques with Mr. Newsom on immigration. As he criticizes the early nominated states of the presidential campaign, his tally of migrant flights has drawn some of his biggest cheering lines.