California and Texas county threaten criminal charges over DeSantis migrant flights

Florida claimed responsibility Tuesday for two charter flights that carried 36 migrants from Texas to a Catholic church in Sacramento, California, on Friday and Monday. Alecia Collins, a spokeswoman for Florida's Division of Emergency Management, insisted the flights were "voluntary," but California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Attorney General Rob Bonta said some of the migrants were misled and flown to California under false pretenses. They said prosecutors are considering criminal charges. 

The flights from Texas and New Mexico were financed through a $12 million migrant relocation fund Florida's Republican-dominated Legislature approved for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). DeSantis took credit for earlier charter flights of 49 migrants from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, but he has not yet commented on the Sacramento flights.

The sheriff of Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, said Monday that his office had completed its investigation of the Martha's Vineyard flight and filed unlawful restraint charges against unidentified officials. In cases involving children, those would be felony charges. Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said Tuesday that determining whether there is enough evidence to pursue the charges in court could be a "lengthy and labor-intensive" process but his office "will be thorough" and "follow the law." 

Newsom called DeSantis a "small, pathetic man" in a tweet on Monday and suggested the Sacramento flights may merit "kidnapping charges." When he met with some of the migrants on Saturday, they "independently told me similar stories about how they were misled and lied to," Newsom told Politico on Tuesday. "We are very serious about pursuing action, if the facts dictate it. And Mr. DeSantis should know that."

Holding anyone criminally or civilly responsible for Florida's migrant flights may prove challenging and will rest on proving the migrants were misled and did not give informed consent when boarding the planes, legal experts told The New York Times. 

Collins said the migrants gave "verbal and written consent" and "indicated they wanted to go to California." She also complained that the DeSantis administration is being held to a different standard than state and local leaders who bussed migrants from their cities and states elsewhere in the country, a trick pioneered by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Bonta told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the migrants were "dumped and deserted" in Sacramento as "political pawns," with false promises of employment and no understanding they were heading to California. He called Collins' statement "propaganda," adding, "You cannot have consent to travel if it's based on deception."

Newsom pointed out that DeSantis wasn't even flying migrants from his own non-border state. "How utterly pathetic it is that a governor from an East Coast state had to hire, with tax dollars, staff and a private contractor to find people in another state to travel them to two states in order to get attention," he told Politico. "How pathetic is that? And potentially illegal as well."