A president who promised transparency sure seems to love cloak and dagger.
ROMA, TEXAS - AUGUST 14: U.S. Border Patrol agents speak to an unaccompanied minor from Honduras, 4, after she crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on August 14, 2021 in Roma, Texas. Recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show more than 200,000 people were apprehended at the border in July, the highest number in 21 years. Almost 19,000 of them were unaccompanied children and teens. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Planes full of young migrants are being flown into cities around the country under cover of darkness. Originating in Texas, the flights are part of an effort by the Biden administration to resettle illegal immigrants who are presently swamping the southern border. But far from being a humanitarian effort, the government is exposing vulnerable children and communities to more danger.
According to a report by the New York Post, “the Biden administration is using secret flights to small airports to move unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the border.” Reporters on the ground witnessed flights land in Westchester County Airport, NY, and then followed buses as the migrants were delivered to various locations around Long Island and New Jersey.
Not Just a New York Issue
In May, Tennessee lawmakers expressed alarm after learning that unaccompanied minors had been flown into their state at night without their knowledge. Footage and flight records obtained by WRCB Channel 3 show that planes arrived late at night at Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center carrying youngsters who were put on buses and dispersed to other southeastern regions.
The TV station wrote that a “source with direct knowledge of the operation asked to remain anonymous but tells Channel 3 that approximately 30 to 50 minors are transported at a time, some to reunite with family members and others to go to group homes. He says the operation started in Dallas, Texas, but moved to small airports recently to avoid attention.”
The Post also reports that on Saturday, October 16, journalists at Jacksonville International Airport in Florida witnessed a Boeing 737-700 land late in the evening and put youths on buses. Author Miranda Devine writes that after “a two-hour ride, the group arrived around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Twin Oaks Academy, a juvenile detention center in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee, where staffers were waiting to open a gate topped with barbed wire.”
Protecting Kids?
The White House has insisted that all those who are being released into the United States are either children or teens. However, the author of the exposé, Devine, told Tucker Carlson on October 18 that of the 100 or so migrants her team witnessed, “several looked to us to be males in their 20s.”
It is worth noting that migrant routes are often used by criminal gangs such as MS-13 to send recruits to cities within the U.S., and that the gang comprises members as young as 11 years old.
A spokeswoman for Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, questioned, “If the Biden Administration is so confident that their open-border policy is good for our country, why the secrecy?” She continued:
“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?
“Washington D.C. sets immigration policies that do not affect them, and states — that lack information about migrant resettlement and do not have the authority to change federal immigration policy — are expected to bear the brunt of Biden’s reckless open-borders agenda.”
(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
A Matter of Trust
The Biden administration may well be acting within the bounds of the law, but the manner in which it is shipping migrants all over the country smacks of cloak and dagger. If the president were so proud of his accomplishments and continued action on one of the most divisive crises facing America, why would these flights be operating late at night under the cover of darkness? The clandestine operations suggest that the government considers the release of illegal migrants into the country – essentially making every state a border town – a red line with potential voters.
The grim reality is that for every child migrant flown into cities, there is a risk. Whether that risk is to the child who may have been trafficked or to the community in which the young person is delivered is an unknown quality. Reports suggest that for a significant percentage of those released into the U.S., they will simply disappear from the radar and not attend any further court proceedings.
President Biden has created a situation where children could face slavery, abuse, or membership of a dangerous gang that prides itself on the level of violence it is willing to commit. Perhaps that is why he is reluctant to have the public see what happens when the sun goes down.
~ Read more from Mark Angelides.
