Is Joe Biden secretly flying migrants in to New York? The truth behind claims
With the border crisis overwhelming Texas officials, it appears as if the Joe Biden administration is secretly working on a solution. Since August, the federal government has been relocating migrant children and teens to New York, with charter flights flying them from Texas. To avoid being detected, it seems the administration has been landing the flights at late night when a voluntary curfew is in effect.
The border crisis is one of the several issues plaguing the current administration, with few long-term solutions in sight. In March, Vice President Kamala Harris was put in charge, a move that was widely slammed and continues to be a source of great controversy. As we reported back then, the government was spending $86m on hotels to house the surge in migrants, with one report slamming the amount and wrongly reporting it as $392 per day.
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The southern border crisis has become a major talking point for the Republican Party, but it's been an issue across administrations. While Donald Trump was simply keen to shun migrants, preferring to keep them in Mexico or refuse entry altogether, the Biden administration has taken a slightly different approach. It has kept most Trump-era policies in place, but is also actively working on relocating children.
Is Biden relocating migrants to New York?
The New York Post broke the news of the administration's relocation plans, confirming that they have been going on for months now. It appears most of those being relocated are children and teens, with a handful of adults also included. The Post traced the migrants to a facility in Long Island, while others met "relatives or sponsors in New Jersey." A source confirmed that migrants were flown from Texas to Westchester County Airport, from where they were transported by bus to areas like The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, upstate Newburgh and Bridgeport, and Danbury in Connecticut.
Since August 8, around 2,000 migrants have reportedly been relocated this way, having been flown from Houston on 21 planes. Some planes touched down in Westchester County between midnight and 6:30 am, with The Post noting two flights landed at 2:13 am and 4:29 am on August 20. The publication further tracked a bus on October 15 from the airport to Syosset, Long Island, where it stopped at the campus of MercyFirst.
A similar scene played out in Jacksonville, Florida. The Post noted that many flights touched down in the city before continuing on to Westchester. On October 16, a Boeing 737-700 landed at around 10 pm at Jacksonville International Airport. From there, a group of around 10-15 people was taken to the Twin Oaks Academy, a juvenile facility in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee.
Clandestine nature slammed
News of the clandestine operations has led to widespread criticism from the GOP, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. "If the Biden Administration is so confident that their open-border policy is good for our country, why the secrecy?" spokesperson for DeSantis Christina Pushaw told The Post. Pushaw added, "Why is the Biden Administration refusing to share even the most basic information about illegal alien resettlement in communities throughout our state and the entire country?"
A Republican candidate for governor, Rob Astorino of Westchester also slammed the secretive operations. "The Biden administration is systematically spreading the southern border crisis to communities all around the country, often shrouded in secrecy and under the cloak of darkness," he said. The White House has never acknowledged the full extent of the operation, so it is unclear how much it costs, and how many children will be relocated over what time period.
That said, we do have some confirmations that the operation is a formally sanctioned one. The White House on October 18 insisted that it was relocating only teens and children. According to the MercyFirst website, the group has a contract to supply the federal government with residential services for "immigrant youth." Locals have also seen unusual things, like the Westchester airport being "darker than usual" and "out of service" buses hanging around near the airport.
Questions will be asked, but as with most things under Biden, it seems like answers won't be very forthcoming. So far, the only acknowledegment of the operation has come from the US Department of Health and Human Services. Democratic Westchester County Executive George Latimer was also the only known person to defend the operation, with a spokesperson saying, "This is similar to when HHS, under the Trump administration, housed almost 1 thousand migrant children in Westchester- without the County’s prior knowledge or approval. Then, as opposed to now, there was no outcry by anyone."