SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

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.

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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.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously in favor of the government in a case that determines how courts should rule on the credibility of an asylum seekers' claim when the facts in the case are in doubt.

In Tuesday's ruling, the Court reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling that found two asylum seekers' claims to be credible.

In one case, Ming Dai sought asylum in the U.S., claiming China sought to persecute him for violating the government's one-child policy. In a separate case that was also considered, Cesar Alcaraz-Enriquez sought permission to stay in the U.S. because he feared persecution in Mexico.

In writing the opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that instead of presuming an asylum seekers' account to be fact, the Board of Immigration Appeals should review factfinders' work and apply "applying a presumption of credibility" only "if there is no explicit adverse credibility determination."

The ruling was the latest in a series of high court decisions that overturned rulings made by the Ninth Circuit — an appeals circuit that includes western states like California that's known for liberal leanings. Last week, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a pair of Ninth Circuit rulings.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Reopening offices and hiring more staff, agencies across the U.S. are preparing to welcome more refugees. Many were forced to close or scale back operations after years of record-low admissions set by the Trump Administration.

“We literally pick them up at the airport," said Michael Hopkins, CEO of Jewish Family Service (JFS) of San Diego.

Resettlement agencies like JFS welcome refugees to their new homes in cities across the U.S.

“Everything from furniture to dishes to food in the fridge, we start the family off. So, we’re beginning to plan for all of that," said Hopkins.

In anticipation of more refugee arrivals, they’re renting apartments, recruiting volunteers, and hiring specialized staff.

“In past years, San Diego alone could resettle 5,000 individuals. So, when you think about 15,000 throughout the entire country, it’s a rather small number," says Hopkins, referring to the 15,000 refugee cap set by President Trump for 2021.

Each year in the United States, the president consults Congress and sets an annual cap for refugee admissions.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) says before the Trump Administration, the average annual ceiling exceeded 95,000. The organization says presidents of both parties have set even higher ceilings: President Ronald Reagan’s highest ceiling was 140,000, and President Barack Obama set a refugee admissions target of 110,000 for 2017.

After Trump took office, he lowered Obama's 110,000 refugee cap to 50,000 and would continue reducing admission in the years ahead:

• 2018 : 45,000 cap
• 2019: 30,000 cap
• 2020: 18,000 cap
• 2021: 15,000 cap

Despite promising to raise admissions, President Biden announced in April he wouldn’t be doing it this year. But after weeks of backlash, he reversed the decision, raising the cap to 62,500 refugees, quadrupling Trump’s refugee cap.

But resettling 62,500 this fiscal year is unlikely.

“The whole process was really dismantled," said Hopkins. "So, the Biden Administration, in order to get the numbers back up, also has to reinvest in the infrastructure and get government personnel to all those locations to be able to do this work.”

The UN Refugee Agency says of the 80 million people who’ve been forced from their homes worldwide, 26 million are identified as refugees.

Unlike asylum-seekers, refugees are vetted and screened overseas in a lengthy process. Hopkins says they've already fled their country of origin either because of persecution, war, or violence. Asylum-seekers leave their country seeking protection from persecution and human rights violations, but they haven't yet been legally recognized as a refugee and must wait to receive a decision on their asylum claim.

“As a person who was a first-year in a university, that was extremely difficult, having car bombs and IEDs and terrorist groups operating," said Eder Raheemah, an Iraqi refugee resettled to the U.S. five years ago.

Born in Mosul, Iraq, Raheemah says he was familiar with the sounds of war. But by the time he got to college, the violence intensified.

“What’s next? Even if you get a Ph.D. in physics, what would you do with it? That’s the worst part, the absence of hope," said Raheemah.

His family waited five years before they were accepted to the U.S. as refugees.

“That was one of the real happy moments for me and my family," said Raheemah. “Having a job where you can feed your family and be secure, that’s all."

Raheemah says he was lucky to know English already when he came to the U.S. but he says his family was blessed to have so many people help them get acclimated to their new home.

"It's a completely different country, culture, language. Different lifestyle, different everything. But it's still, it's security," said Raheemah.

Hopkins says they may only get a couple of day's notice that a refugee is coming to San Diego.

"We need to do a lot of this work, whether they’re coming or not. Because we can’t wait until the moment they come," said Hopkins.

But he says they'll be ready to serve more refugees when they arrive.

“Today is exactly five years I’ve been in the United States. And after those five years, I’ve been blessed like 200 times than what I ever thought of,” said Raheemah.

An engineer and new homeowner, he hopes more refugees will soon get the same chance.

“I can’t ask to be rich because I think I am rich, because I’m safe.”