The Biden administration is still moving unaccompanied minors who came across the United States-Mexico border out of shelters and into non-border states, according to an exclusive report from the New York Post, which tracked flights coming in “in the dead of night,” transporting the underage migrants to suburban New York.
“Planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into suburban New York in an effort by President Biden’s administration to quietly resettle them across the region,” according to the Post’s report. “The charter flights originate in Texas, where the ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local immigration officials, and have been underway since at least August, according to sources familiar with the matter.”
The Post said Tuesday that its reporters witnessed two planes land at Westchester Airport and “most of the passengers who got off appeared to be children and teens, with a small portion appearing to be men in their 20s…Some of them were later seen meeting up with relatives or sponsors in New Jersey, or being dropped off at a residential facility on Long Island.”
Records suggest that as many as 2,000 migrants may have been transported from facilities along the border to New York state, a fraction of the “37,805 unaccompanied minors” that, according to United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) entered the U.S. illegally during the months of July and August — and a further fraction of the tens of thousands who have come across the border since President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
The most recent numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the Unaccompanied Children (UC) program, an average of 16,000 children were in HHS care on any given day in August of 2021, down significantly from April and May, when there was an average of 20,000 children in HHS care, but still significant. HHS is currently operating at nearly 2/3s capacity, taking all of its shelters into consideration.
The number of children “discharged” from HHS care has risen precipitously; the department is now processing and referring around 15,000 per month, up from just a few thousand per month at the beginning of 2021.
There have been changes in the process since earlier this year, as well. As The Daily Wire previously noted, the Biden administration flew unaccompanied minor children to shelters in Tennessee earlier this year.
A local news organization “obtained video of one of [the planes carrying illegal immigrant minors] arriving Friday, May 14 shortly before 1:30 a.m.,” WRCB reported. “A second video, shared with Channel 3, shows more children arriving late Saturday night. According to the source who provided the video, a third plane carrying children arrived Friday afternoon. Flight records confirm that a fourth plane arrived early Wednesday morning, May 19.”
Clearly, those flights are continuing, per the Post. “A source familiar with the operation at the Westchester airport said the underage migrants typically arrive carrying backpacks and are bused to locations including the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, upstate Newburgh, and Bridgeport and Danbury in Connecticut.”