SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — ABC 10News interviewed California Attorney General Rob Bonta about how the state will respond after a group of migrants, who entered the country through Texas, were dropped off in front of a Sacramento church following a flight on a private, chartered jet.
Bonta described the trials and tribulations the migrants faced on their journey to Texas, saying that the group mostly from Venuezela had traveled for about three months to make it to the border.
Additionally, the attorney general accused the state of Florida of orchestrating the transportation of the migrants to California under the Sunshine State's "Voluntary Transportation Program." Bonta told 10News the migrants carried documents that specifically listed the state of Florida and that program. He also says Vertol Systems, Inc. chartered the migrants to Sacramento.
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Below, you'll find a transcribed version of this interview broken down into a Q&A format. At the top of this page, you can watch the full interview, which was conducted via Zoom.
Question 1: Can you tell me about how you first discovered that 16 migrants were dropped in front of a Sacramento church doorstep? When did you first hear about it, and what was that initial reaction like?
Answer: I got indication on Friday, when they arrived... That 16 migrants had been brought to Sacramento by charter, private flight and were now in Sacramento. And I understood that Catholic Charities had reached out to the Department of Social Services for California, and then made it to the Governor's office, and then to the Attorney General's office. And so — I and my team immediately began making plans for me to spend time with them, and visit with them and speak with them. And after a long journey, and after being manipulated and exploited and abused, they were interested in getting some rest on Friday. But on Saturday morning, I visited with them and spoke to every one of them and had a chance to hear about their their stories and their their journey to arrive into Sacramento.
Question 2: Where are the majority of the migrants from? When you spoke with them, what kind of things did they tell you? Did you gain insight about their circumstance?
Answer: Most are from Venezuela. I think 14 of the 16 from Venezuela, the other two from Colombia. Most... All were young. One began her journey when she was 17. And when I met her yesterday, she's she's now 18. She's the youngest of those were in their mid 20s. Some in their early 30s. All relatively young, most were men. Twelve I would say of the 16 were men and there were four women. And they generally had a journey of about three months that took them from Venezuela, through multiple countries, by walking, by bus, by rail, by boat to arrive in the United States, and specifically in Texas. And they came with the hope and dream of working... of earning their keep, of contributing, and being compensated for their work and their contribution.
They want to have a job, and they want to be able to support their families. Many of them separated from their families and went on this journey with the hope of being able to find a job that would allow them to send money home.
One told me she had a 3 year old at home, and another said they had six children at home. One of them played for me an audio recording on his phone of his 9-year-old daughter, who said this in her voicemail... She said, 'Papa, tengo hambre... Father, I'm hungry. We didn't eat yesterday. Mama is sick. Please help us.' And he said that that was during his journey, so it was days or weeks ago. And he is very eager and feeling a very strong sense of urgency to be able to work and send money home for the future and survival of his family.
And they all said, you know, we want to work. We're not asking for a handout. We're not asking to be given anything we don't deserve. We want to work and get a job. And we also want to make sure we attend our immigration hearings. They all had hearings that were given to them somewhere as early as later this month, some later this year. And many of them were in locations nowhere near Sacramento, like New York or Chicago.
And so they are concerned about assuring that they can attend those and making sure that they don't fail to appear and then have a order in their absence — ordering their removal from the United States. So, they want to work and they want to attend their immigration hearing so that they can go through the appropriate process here in the United States to be able to stay... And their journey was unique where they came from, the challenges they faced.
They mentioned that they found each other on the journey. Most of them didn't know each other back in their home country. They met each other on the journey, and they stuck together. They often slept on the street, and they said that they slept together near each other in a group for safety, so that they wouldn't be alone and able to be targeted. They also said that there were days when they didn't eat. And after all that, to arrive in the United States of America, and for the first people that they met — the people who abused them, exploited them, lied to them, mistreated them, misled them, deceived them, and said that they would, you know, gave them hope about why they came, that they would help them find a job if they got on this plane, when they had no intention of helping them find a job and didn't lift a finger to provide them a job.
You know, they've suffered, and they were wronged. And it was the state of Florida who did it.
They have documents that have the name of the state of Florida on it. It names this specific program that these individuals who met them were participating in. The state of Florida, and I say it's euphemistically called this, Voluntary Transportation Program, and it's being implemented by a private vendor, a private company called Vertol Systems, Inc. And, you know, this is Governor DeSantis, this is the state of Florida. This is his cruel, inhumane political stunt. Manipulating human beings, people, for whatever cheap political points, in his run for presidency.
So, they were wronged, they have suffered. And having gone through that difficult journey to get here, and then the abuse and exploitation by the state of Florida... They were grateful for what they were given in Sacramento. They said 'Thank you for caring. Thank you for having a big heart. We haven't had a good meal in a longtime.' They had a roof over their head to sleep in. They're being provided with legal counsel, and mental and physical health care. And people who are going to help them make sure they can attend their hearings, and maybe one day find a job.
That's how they should have been treated the whole time. That's what it means to be American — an America built on immigrants. Their story is very unique. But at its core, it's the story of people coming from a country where they're facing suffering or violence and don't have a future and coming to America in pursuit of opportunity and a better life. That story has been told thousands of times and thousands of ways across decades in the United States of America.
It's my story. It's my mother's story. My parents brought me to California when I was 2 months old from the Philippines, because of the rise of a dictator and the stripping away of freedoms, and democracy and human rights. And they wanted a better life and opportunity here in California. That's what these folks want. But they were treated with the most unAmerican approach, that they could have received the opposite of what we should be doing. They were treated as political pawns and exploited. And so that's wrong. And Governor DeSantis should be ashamed of himself. He's small, and petty, and xenophobic and racist. And he's advertising that to the world with this disgusting policy that they've implemented in the state of Florida.
Question 3: I want you to connect the dots for me. So — the migrants were in Texas when they first crossed into the country, and what you believe is that officials in Florida orchestrated moving them from Texas, to New Mexico, to Sacramento. I just want to make sure we're clear, based on the evidence you're gathering... is that what you have found so far?
Answer: That's what we found. You are right to be seemingly dubious or wanting confirmation, because it's the state of Florida operating in other states that have no connection to the state of Florida.
There's not one migrant here that has ever set foot in the state of Florida. The state of Florida has used state of Florida public tax dollars to pay for Vertol Systems to be in Texas, another state, a different state, to engage with migrants and to mislead them with the hope and dream of possibly finding jobs, to lure them onto a plane and to take them to another state. Again, another state that's not Florida. So it's... it's perplexing why the state of Florida would be operating a program like this that operates in another state, but yet they are.
The documents show it.
And you have the chronology right. The Vertol Systems representatives met that migrants in El Paso, Texas, took them by van, I believe, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then they flew from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Sacramento, California.
Question 4: What potential criminal or civil actions are you looking to pursue in this case? Tell me who specifically you might be going after... And how possible would it be to go after those that are potentially in other states? Can you paint that picture for me and what that would look like?
Answer: High level, we're looking at all possible civil and criminal actions that we can take based on the facts in the law here. And the people that could be potentially implicated are those who were part of this official act and carried it out. So, the state of Florida, Governor DeSantis, the employees who work for Vertol Systems, the private vendor that's hired by the state of Florida.
They're the ones who did this. This is their official policy. It's in their budget. It's a budget signed by the governor of Florida. They're not hiding this program. It has an official name: the state of Florida Voluntary Transportation Program.
Again, I say it's euphemistic, because they want us to believe it's voluntary. But these are individuals who are potentially under duress and being mistreated, and misled and deceived, so we're looking at both criminal and civil. On the criminal side, we're looking at potential felonies, potential misdemeanors. A lot of what is at the core of what we're looking at is the potential duress, deception, misrepresentation, falsification, fraudulent aspects of the conduct. And of course, the individuals were in the course and scope of this, of these acts, were brought and ultimately arrived in California.
That is the California nexus.
Question 5: Are you now helping these migrants get to the destinations that they need to go to, in the sense of if they have a court case in a certain state? Are you providing transportation? What happens to these migrants now?
Answer: As you would expect in California, there's a team who have come together to provide the different supports that the migrants need. And one is a legal counsel available to them, to assist them in making sure they can attend their hearings. That might mean rescheduling them or relocating them.
If they're going to be in Sacramento, it could be that day, the hearings get relocated to a place that's convenient in California. So there is support to work with them to make sure that they can get a hearing at a place and time where they can appear and participate in person in that hearing. And then, you know, all sorts of other support: Food, shelter, mental and physical health, legal counsel, pathways to jobs are all being provided to them.
Question 6: When you hear governors, like Abbott or DeSantis, ones that have been very vocal on this, say "we're overwhelmed by the influx of migrants," and the only way that we can get attention about this issue is to send migrants to other places to get attention of some of these leaders in these other states... What would be your response when you hear some of these leaders and some of these areas say things like that?
Answer: It's a silly, cruel, inhumane, disgusting political stunt. Not one of these migrants is from Florida. This is Governor DeSantis reaching out into another state to try to create out of whole cloth some political points for himself. He's not saying 'I have all these migrants in Florida that I need to move.' He's going over to Texas, and no one needs to tell California about immigrants and migrants. We are California. We are a border state. We are the largest state in the nation, with the most immigrants in the nation. We have thrived with immigrants. We know they are an integral part of who we are, who we will be our future and our present, that they have built our state that we that are immigrants are in leadership positions, driving forward our pathway and defining our future.
I'm one of them.
There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of others. And the way we do it in California is the way it should be done. It's the way the Statute of Liberty tells us that we should do it: Bringing us our poor, huddled masses, and tired and huddled masses and caring for them. And we're a country of immigrants. We're a state of immigrants in California. So, it is political theater. It is cruel and inhumane. It represents the worst of who we are. And the folks who are doing this need to be reminded that politics is about helping people, not about hurting people.
They're hurting people, intentionally. Deliberately. They're exploiting them for their own personal political gain. They're not providing any policy solution here. They're not providing any humane or compassionate approach to our immigration system. It's simple cruelty, callous political theater, that should be rejected out of hand.
It's unAmerican. It's not who we are.
