SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Officials were investigating Tuesday whether Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis was behind a flight that picked up asylum-seekers on the Texas border and flew them — apparently without their knowledge — to California’s capital, even as faith-based groups scrambled to find housing and food for them.

About 20 people ranging in age from 21 to 30 were flown by private jet to Sacramento on Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. It was the second such flight in four days.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and faith-based groups who have been assisting the migrants scheduled a news conference Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom lashed out at DeSantis as a “small, pathetic man” and suggested the state could pursue kidnapping charges.

DeSantis and other Florida state officials were mum, as they were initially last year when they flew 49 Venezuelan migrants to the upscale Massachusetts enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, luring them onto private jets from a shelter in San Antonio.

DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president, has been a fierce critic of federal immigration policy under President Joe Biden and has heavily publicized Florida’s role in past instances in which migrants were transported to Democratic-led states.

He has made the migrant relocation program one of his signature political priorities, using the state legislative process to direct millions of dollars to it and working with multiple contractors to carry out the flights. Vertol Systems Co., which was paid by Florida to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, appears to be behind the flights to Sacramento on Monday and last Friday, Bonta said, adding that the migrants were carrying “an official document from the state of Florida” that mentions the company. The company didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Altogether, more than three dozen migrants arrived in Sacramento on flights last Friday and on Monday. Most are from Colombia and Venezuela. California had not been their intended destination and shelters and aid workers were taken by surprise, authorities said.

Friday’s group was dropped off at the Roman Catholic Church diocese’s headquarters in Sacramento. U.S. immigration officials had already processed them in Texas and given them court dates for their asylum cases, and none had planned to arrive in California, said Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based group helping the migrants in Sacramento.

Asylum seekers can change the location of their court appearances, but many are reluctant to try and instead prefer sticking with a firm date, at least for their initial appearances. They figure it is a guarantee, even if horribly inconvenient.

The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have previously sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., but the rare charter flights by DeSantis mark an escalation in tactics. The two groups sent to Sacramento never went through Florida. Instead, they were approached in El Paso by people with Florida-linked paperwork, sent to New Mexico, then put on private flights to California’s capital, California officials and advocates said.

Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs. The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight Monday, Bonta said.

“To see leaders and governments of other states and the state of Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, acting with cruelty and inhumanity and moral bankruptcy and being petty and small and hurtful and harmful to those vulnerable asylum seekers is blood-boiling,” Bonta said in a Monday interview.

Some of the migrants who arrived Friday told Bonta they met on their nearly three-month journey to the United States and decided to stick together to keep each other safe as they slept on the streets in several countries, he said.

As the migrants arrived in California Monday, a Texas sheriff’s office announced it has recommended criminal charges over the two flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year.

Johnny Garcia, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, said that at this time the office is not naming suspects. It’s not clear whether the local district attorney will pursue the charges, which include misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff’s office.

The office of New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had no specifics as to why the immigrants were taken from Texas to New Mexico before being flown to California.

“Gov. Lujan Grisham stresses, yet again, the urgent need for comprehensive, thoughtful federal immigration reform which is rooted in a humanitarian response that keeps border communities in mind,” the governor’s spokesperson, Caroline Sweeney, said Monday.

Last year, DeSantis directed Republican lawmakers in Florida to create a program in his office dedicated to migrant relocations. It specified that the state could transport migrants from locations anywhere in the country. The law was designed to get around questions about the legality of transporting people on a flight that originated in Texas.

Florida’s alleged role in the arrival of the two groups in Sacramento is sure to escalate the political feud between DeSantis and Newsom, who have offered conflicting visions on immigration, abortion and a host of other issues. ___

Rodriguez reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Fla., Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.

___

Find more AP coverage of immigration: https://apnews.com/hub/immigration

Trân Nguyễn And Olga R. Rodriguez, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s reliance on the tactic known as “stop and frisk” as part of a new initiative to combat gun violence is harming communities of color and running afoul of the law, a court-appointed federal monitor reported Monday.

Monitor Mylan Denerstein said the NYPD ‘s Neighborhood Safety Teams — special units deployed in the past 14 months to seize guns in high-crime areas — were engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by stopping and frisking too many people without justification.

In one police precinct, Denerstein said, only 41 percent of stops, 32 percent of frisks and 26 percent of searches were lawful.

The Neighborhood Safety Teams, a replacement for the anti-crime units that the NYPD disbanded in 2021, operate in 34 areas that account for 80% of the city’s violent crime — largely communities of color. Of the people the teams have stopped, Denerstein said, 97% are Black or Hispanic.

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said city officials “have serious concerns” with Denerstein’s methodology and that they only learned of her findings after news outlets reported on them.

The spokesperson, Fabien Levy, said shootings have fallen since the Neighborhood Safety Teams were created.

Officers assigned to the units “have enhanced training and oversight to ensure we are not only keeping New Yorkers safe, but protecting their civil liberties as well,” Levy said, adding that “any unconstitutional stop is unacceptable, and we will strive to do better for New Yorkers every day.”

Denerstein said she began her review after Adams announced in March 2022 that the NYPD was deploying Neighborhood Safety Teams in some precincts to combat gun violence. Team members, wearing modified uniforms and driving unmarked cars, conduct stops, frisks and searches in their assigned neighborhoods.

“Unfortunately, the results are disappointing,” Denerstein wrote.

Despite their training and experience, officers assigned to Neighborhood Safety Teams “overall appear to be stopping, frisking, and searching individuals at an unsatisfactory level of compliance. Too many people are stopped, frisked, and searched unlawfully.”

In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD had violated the civil rights of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers with stop and frisk, which was part of an effort to get guns and drugs off the street by frequently stopping and searching people on the street.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled the stops were a form of indirect racial profiling. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a champion of the tactic, has since apologized for its use.

Since the ruling, the department claimed a sharp drop in stops, reporting an average of around 11,730 per year from 2016 to 2022, compared with a high of nearly 686,000 stops in 2011.

Black and Hispanic people continue to be the targets of the vast majority of stops, accounting for 89% of all stops in 2022, according to NYPD data compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s attorney general announced Monday she has begun investigating the board of directors of Fox Corp. for breaching its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims about the 2020 presidential election — claims that cost the broadcaster almost $800 million in a lawsuit.

Also joining the investigation is Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read, who oversees the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, which owns more than 250,000 shares of Fox stock. Both Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and Read are Democrats.

“Treasurer Read and I believe that Fox’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election,” Rosenblum said. “We hope to hold the board accountable and protect the long-term value of Oregon’s investment in Fox Corp.”

The head of Fox’s corporate communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement.

In April, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to avert a trial in the voting machine company’s lawsuit that would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion had argued that the news outlet owned by Fox Corp. damaged Dominion’s reputation by peddling phony conspiracy theories that claimed its equipment switched votes from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.

Lachlan Murdoch, chair and CEO of Fox Corp., said when the settlement was announced that it avoids “the acrimony of a divisive trial and a multiyear appeal process, a decision clearly in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.”

The Oregon Department of Justice said the investigation will explore leading a lawsuit against Fox’s management on behalf of the company’s harmed investors, which include Oregon’s public employees.

“Fox directors and senior officers manage the company on behalf of its investors,” the department said in a statement. “They have a duty to manage the company competently, honestly, and in a manner that prevents foreseeable and catastrophic financial harm like that inflicted upon company’s shareholders by the Dominion and Smartmatic suits.”

“We invest for Oregon’s public servants and we aim to hold Fox’s board of directors, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, accountable for their decisions,” said Read, who is a member of the Oregon Investment Council, which sets state investment policy. “Investigating Fox’s books and records is a necessary and significant step in fulfilling our obligation to our beneficiaries.”

As of May 26, the Oregon pension fund owned 168,075 Class A common stock shares and 92,850 Class B shares of Fox stock, said Roy Kaufmann, Rosenblum’s spokesperson.

Another voting machine company, Smartmatic USA, has also sued Fox News over Fox News’ bogus election claims. Dominion had sued Fox for $1.6 billion.

Andrew Selsky, The Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources are raising concerns about ties between Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and an Indigenous group from her home state that advocates for halting oil and gas production on public lands.

The members on Monday sent a letter to Haaland requesting documents related to her interactions with Pueblo Action Alliance as well as those of her daughter, Somah, who has worked with the group and has rallied against fossil fuel development.

The request comes just days after Haaland decided to withdraw hundreds of square miles in New Mexico from oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park — an area considered sacred by some Native American communities.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the committee, said Congress has a duty to oversee federal agencies and the cabinet secretaries who lead them and that what he called Haaland’s “alliances” present potential conflicts of interest.

“The committee is calling on Secretary Haaland to shed light on these ties between her family and this extremist group so we can determine the potentially unethical way these types of decisions are being made throughout the federal bureaucracy,” Westerman said in a statement.

The Interior Department had no comment on the letter, agency spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said.

Haaland — who is from the Laguna Pueblo and is the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency — has said the work to protect land around Chaco has been ongoing for decades and that numerous public meetings and consultations with tribal leaders were a part of the process.

Julia Bernal, executive director of Pueblo Action Alliance, called the Chaco decision a compromise because the group has been pushing for more expansive protections.

“The Alliance has urged the Biden administration to protect ancestral lands and address the climate emergency by phasing out fossil fuel extraction on public lands,” Bernal told The Associated Press in an email. “Chairman Westerman’s allegations are a misguided attempt to deflect attention from the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis and the destruction of ancestral lands.”

Industry groups have suggested that Pueblo Action Alliance, Somah Haaland and others have influenced Haaland, who as secretary oversees an agency that manages more than 380,000 square miles (984,196 square kilometers) of public lands.

The Western Energy Alliance says that Haaland and her senior officials have granted special access to Pueblo Action Alliance and its allies and have helped the group lobby members of Congress and the Interior Department on issues before the agency, including oil and gas leasing.

“Secretary Haaland has conflicts of interest that simply wouldn’t be tolerated if they were on behalf of oil and natural gas companies and should not be tolerated when they’re on behalf of environmental special interests,” Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said Monday.

Among the documents the House panel is requesting are copies of the ethical pledges signed by Haaland and any waivers that have been granted to her.

The request also calls for communications between the secretary and Somah Haaland related to oil and gas leasing on federal lands, Pueblo Action Alliance, efforts to lobby members of Congress or other government officials about withdrawing federal land from development and a protest at the agency’s headquarters in October 2021.

Susan Montoya Bryan, The Associated Press