California

Asylum-seekers flown to California say they were deceived

Published

1 year ago

June 17, 2023

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Asylum-seekers flown to California say they were deceived

Florida confirms it transported migrants to California

04:02

SACRAMENTO — Asylum-seekers transported from Texas to California’s capital city of Sacramento two weeks ago say they were misled by people who convinced them to travel with promises of work and shelter.

A total of 36 migrants were driven from Texas to New Mexico where they were then transported on private charter flights to California on June 2 and June 5, Eddie Carmona, director of campaigns with the non-profit PICO California, told CNN. Most of the migrants, two of whom CNN spoke to, are from Venezuela and Colombia, while a few are from Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

“We are here because they offered us a job,” one of the migrants, a 34-year-old Venezuelan man who does not want to be identified for legal reasons, told CNN. “We were deceived by the people who provided the flight service. They offered us jobs and housing.”

Investigators from the California Attorney General’s office have determined that although the migrants came from Texas, they were carrying documents purportedly from the Florida government. The papers listed Vertol Systems Company Inc. as the contractor behind the flights. CNN has obtained a signed contract showing Florida’s Division of Emergency Management hired Vertol Systems to relocate migrants in May. It’s the second time Florida’s government has worked with the contractor since the fall of 2022.

Officials with the Florida Division of Emergency Management have maintained all travel was done on a voluntary basis.

Members of the first group told authorities they were told to sign documents before they could board the plane to Sacramento, according to Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta. However, not all the migrants – who are not fluent in English – understood where they were headed and not all signed the forms, she said.

The Venezuelan migrant, who had only been in the US for a week before being transported to California on the first flight, told CNN four people approached him in a migrant shelter in El Paso, Texas, and promised if he agreed to go to California, he would be given a job and a place to live.

The migrant said the people asked him to sign paperwork in English, which he doesn’t speak. He said although he didn’t understand the document, he signed it because of what he was promised.

A 31-year-old Colombian woman, who was on the second flight and asked not to be identified for legal reasons, told CNN she was approached by two men at a shelter in El Paso, where she had been for 20 days.

The people who approached them never identified themselves or said who they were and only made promises, the migrants told CNN. The Venezuelan migrant said the people told him the help “came from Florida” but didn’t elaborate.

The Colombian migrant was also promised work and housing in California, “but when we arrived,” she said, “all the dreams, everything you thought, they just disappeared.”

‘It’s not fair that they played with our feelings’

When they arrived in Sacramento, the asylum-seekers on the first flight were transported from the airport to a parking lot they did not recognize, the Venezuelan migrant said.

The parking lot belonged to the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, a local church office, where the migrants were “dumped on the doorstep,” California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement, “without any advance warning.”

The people the migrants believed to be their guides disappeared, and the documents they signed were not returned to them, the Venezuelan told CNN.

“He was supposed to hand us over to other people who would take us directly to where we were going to stay. And from there, to work. That’s why we came here, to work,” he added.

Both migrants said they did not understand politics in the US and reiterated they agreed to come to California because they were being offered the opportunity to work.

“I don’t think we should be involved in politics because we are people who have come here after suffering,” said the Venezuelan migrant, who arrived in Texas on May 27 after traveling predominantly on foot for three months from Venezuela to the US in hopes of escaping his country’s “difficult” economic situation.

“We came to work, to earn the goodwill of many people, because many people might think that we came here to Sacramento looking for other things, not for work, not to improve our lives economically, not to be able to send money back to the little ones at home who are waiting for us.”

The Colombian woman who spoke to CNN said she endured the strenuous journey to the US because she wants to provide for her family, and agreed to go to California because she was promised work. It took her two months to travel from Colombia to the US-Mexico border.

“It doesn’t matter what you have to go through because it’s tough to get here. But you have your family in mind,” she said. “Of course, because they say work and you need to work… the bad thing is that we trusted a person whose intentions we didn’t know.”

“It’s not fair that they played with our feelings, that they promised us things they wouldn’t fulfill,” she added.

‘They were lied to and deceived’ advocates say

Shortly after the relocation, the Florida Division of Emergency Management released two-and-a-half minutes of edited video it claimed showed some of the migrants being transported to California. The video includes footage of some people signing documents, as well as stills and silent footage of people boarding a chartered plane.

The two migrants interviewed by CNN verified they appeared in the video, telling CNN they’d been happy to travel at the time because they’d been promised jobs and housing.

Neither of them had ever been on an airplane before.

Officials with the Florida Division of Emergency Management said the migrants who were flown to Sacramento did so voluntarily, countering accusations from California authorities who said the asylum-seekers were misled into taking trips.

“Florida’s voluntary relocation is precisely that – voluntary,” Florida Division of Emergency Management spokesperson Alecia Collins said in a statement on June 6. “Through verbal and written consent, these volunteers indicated they wanted to go to California. A contractor was present and ensured they made it safely to a 3rd-party (non-government organization). The specific NGO, Catholic Charities, is used and funded by the federal government.”

Most of the migrants are young people who are the first in their families to come to the US, according to Gabby Trejo, the executive director of Sacramento Area Congregations Together, a non-profit collaboration between local religious congregations.

She said many walked three to seven months to come to the US for their dream life, but it turned into a nightmare.

“They were lied to and deceived,” Trejo said at a news conference on June 6. “They can be in this country. They have the paperwork, they’re legally in our country.” She noted the migrants have pending hearings with immigration officials.

Newsom called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” in a tweet on June 5 and brought up the possibility of kidnapping charges, linking the post to a California law defining the crime. DeSantis has not answered repeated attempts from CNN for comment on the latest flights or the migrants’ accusations they were deceived.

The California attorney general on June 6 told CNN his office was looking at the possibility of criminal liability, including kidnapping and false imprisonment.

The migrants are now receiving assistance from multiple non-profit organizations in Sacramento who are helping them arrange housing, hire lawyers, and medical checkups, according to Sacramento Area Congregations Together. They are also learning about the basics of living in the US and the organization launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the costs of caring for the migrants.

“Thank God those people appeared and through them, we have been able to rest, we have been able to eat well, we have been able to change our clothes,” the Venezuelan migrant told CNN. “Maybe because here we were left with a little backpack as if we were homeless people on the street.”

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California

Magnitude 3.5 earthquake recorded in Malibu, California Friday afternoon

Published

7 hours ago

November 22, 2024

Press Room

Magnitude 3.5 earthquake recorded in Malibu, California Friday afternoon

An earthquake shook along the Southern California coast Friday afternoon.

The earthquake reportedly occurred in Malibu, west of Los Angeles, at 2:15 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The temblor, which was recorded at a depth of nearly 6 miles, measured a preliminary magnitude of 3.5.

It was not immediately clear if there was any damage.

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California

California bomb cyclone brings record rain, major mudslide risk

Published

15 hours ago

November 22, 2024

Press Room

California bomb cyclone brings record rain, major mudslide risk

An atmospheric river dumping rain across Northern California and several feet of snow in the Sierras was making its way across the state Friday, bringing flooding and threatening mudslides along with it.

The storm, the first big one of the season, moved over California as a bomb cyclone, a description of how it rapidly intensified before making its way onshore.

On Thursday, rain poured across the northern edge of the state, slowly moving south. It rained 3.66 inches in Ukiah on Thursday, breaking the record for the city set in 1977 by a half-inch. Santa Rosa Airport saw 4.93 inches of rain on Thursday, shattering the daily record set in 2001 of 0.93 inches.

More rain is due Friday.

Cars are covered in snow during a storm in Soda Springs.

(Brooke Hess-Homeier / Associated Press)

“Prolonged rainfall will result in an increased risk of flooding, an increased risk of landslides, and downed trees and power lines across the North Bay,” the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office wrote in a Friday morning forecast.

After its initial peak, the system is expected to linger into the weekend, with a second wave of rainfall extending farther south across most of the San Francisco Bay Area, down into the Central Coast and possibly reaching parts of Southern California.

On Saturday, Los Angeles and Ventura counties could see anywhere from a tenth to a third of an inch of rain. San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties could see up to an inch in some areas.

A second round of rain expected to begin Sunday could be “a little stronger than the first but still likely in the ‘beneficial rain’ category,” the National Weather Service said in its latest L.A. forecast.

Chances are low of flooding or any other significant issues in Southern California, forecasters said, though roads could be slick and snarl traffic.

Staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.

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California

Storm dumps record rain and heavy snow on Northern California

Published

23 hours ago

November 22, 2024

Press Room

Storm dumps record rain and heavy snow on Northern California

FORESTVILLE, CALIFORNIA —

A major storm moving through Northern California on Thursday dropped heavy snow and record rain, flooding some areas, after killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands in the Pacific Northwest.

Forecasters warned that the risk of flash flooding and rockslides would continue, and scores of flights were canceled at San Francisco’s airport.

In Washington, nearly 223,000 people — mostly in the Seattle area — remained without power as crews worked to clear streets of electrical lines, fallen branches and debris. Utility officials said the outages, which began Tuesday, could last into Saturday.

Meanwhile on the East Coast, where rare wildfires have raged, New York and New Jersey welcomed much-needed rain that could ease the fire danger for the rest of the year.

The National Weather Service extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas north of San Francisco as the region was inundated by this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land.

The system roared ashore Tuesday as a ” bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. It unleashed fierce winds that toppled trees onto roads, vehicles and homes, killing at least two people in the Washington cities of Lynnwood and Bellevue.

Communities in Washington opened warming centers offering free internet and device charging. Some medical clinics closed because of power outages.

“I’ve been here since the mid-’80s. I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Trish Bloor, who serves on the city of Issaquah’s Human Resources Commission, as she surveyed damaged homes.

Up to 41 centimeters of rain was forecast in southwestern Oregon and California’s northern counties through Friday.

Santa Rosa saw 16.5 centimeters of rain in the last 24 hours, marking the wettest day on record since 1998, according to Joe Wegman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The Sonoma County Airport, in the wine country north of San Francisco, got more than 28 centimeters within the last 48 hours. The Ukiah Municipal Airport recorded about 7.6 centimeters Wednesday, and the unincorporated town of Venado had about 32.3 centimeters in 48 hours.

A car is left stranded on a flooded road during a storm Nov. 21, 2024, in Windsor, Calif.

In nearby Forestville, one person was hurt when a tree fell on a house. Small landslides were reported across the North Bay, including one on State Route 281 on Wednesday that caused a car crash, according to Marc Chenard, a weather service meteorologist.

Daniela Alvarado said calls to her and her father’s Sonoma County-based tree business have nearly tripled in the last few days, with people reaching out about trimming or removing trees.

“We feel sad, scared, but also ready for action,” Alvarado said.

Rain slowed somewhat, but “persistent heavy rain will enter the picture again by Friday morning,” the weather service’s San Francisco office said on the social platform X. “We are not done!”

Dangerous flash flooding, rockslides and debris flows were possible, especially where hillsides were loosened by recent wildfires, officials warned. Scott Rowe, a hydrologist with the weather service in Sacramento, said that so far the ground has been able to absorb the rain in Butte and Tehama counties, where the Park Fire burned this summer.

“It’s not necessarily how much rain falls; it’s how fast the rain falls,” Rowe said.

Santa Rosa Division Chief Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said 100 vehicles were stuck for hours in the parking lot of a hotel and medical center after being swamped by thigh-high waters from a flooded creek.

A winter storm watch was in place for the northern Sierra Nevada above 1,070 meters, with 38 centimeters of snow possible over two days. Wind gusts could top 121 kph in mountain areas, forecasters said.

Sugar Bowl Resort, north of Lake Tahoe near Donner Summit, picked up 30 centimeters of snow overnight, marketing manager Maggie Eshbaugh said Thursday. She said the resort will welcome skiers and boarders on Friday, the earliest opening date in 20 years, “and then we’re going to get another whopping of another foot or so on Saturday, so this is fantastic.”

Another popular resort, Palisades Tahoe, said it is also opening Friday, five days ahead of schedule.

The storm already dumped more than 30 centimeters of snow along the Cascades in Oregon by Wednesday night, according to the weather service.

More than a dozen schools closed in the Seattle area Wednesday, and some opted to extend the closures through Thursday.

Covington Medical Center southeast of Seattle postponed elective surgeries and diverted ambulances after losing power and having to rely on generators Tuesday night into Wednesday, according to Scott Thompson, spokesperson for MultiCare Health System. Nearby, MultiCare clinics closed Wednesday and Thursday after losing power.

In Enumclaw, also southeast of Seattle, residents were cleaning up after their town clocked the highest winds in the state Tuesday night: 119 kph.

Ben Gibbard, lead singer of the indie rock bands Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service, drove from his Seattle neighborhood Thursday morning to the woods of Tiger Mountain for his regular weekday run, but trees were blocking the trail.

A downed tree rests on a property during a storm, Nov. 21, 2024, in Forestville, Calif.

“We didn’t get hit that hard in the city,” he said. “I just didn’t assume it would be this kind of situation out here. Obviously you feel the most for people who had their homes partially destroyed by this.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee thanked utility crews for toiling around the clock. It could take weeks to assess the scope of the damage and put a dollar figure on it, he said in a statement, and after that “we’ll know whether we will be able to seek federal assistance.”

In California, there were reports of nearly 13,000 power outages.

Authorities limited vehicle traffic on part of northbound Interstate 5 between Redding and Yreka due to snow, according to California’s Department of Transportation. Officials also shut down a 3.2-kilometer stretch of the scenic Avenue of the Giants, named for its towering coast redwoods, due to flooding.

About 550 flights were delayed and dozens were canceled Thursday at San Francisco International Airport, according to tracking service FlightAware.

Parched areas of the Northeast got a much-needed shot of precipitation, providing a bit of respite in a region plagued by wildfires and dwindling water supplies. More than 5 centimeters was expected by Saturday morning north of New York City, with snow mixed in at higher elevations.

Weather service meteorologist Brian Ciemnecki in New York City, which this week saw its first drought warning in 22 years, said “any rainfall is going to be significant” but the storm will not be enough to end the drought.

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