Sixteen Venezuelan and Colombian migrants who entered the country through Texas were flown to California by chartered plane and dropped off outside a church in Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom and migrant rights advocates said Saturday.
The young men and women were dropped off Friday outside the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento with only a backpack’s worth of belongings each, said Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based community organizing group that has been assisting the migrants.
The migrants had already been processed by U.S. immigration officials and given court dates for their asylum cases when “individuals representing a private contractor” approached them outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, Carmona said. They offered to help the migrants get jobs and get them to their final destination, he said….