Biden Admin Hiding ‘Ghost Flights’ Scattering Illegal Migrants Around The Country BY: JAMES VARNEY for The Federalist
‘The government knows. But they are being as opaque and ‘darkened-windows’ as they can be about the entire matter.’
After months of delay, the Department of Homeland Security replied late last month to a congressional demand for information about the number of illegal migrants the department has flown from border towns to communities around the country. In 2021, it said, 71,617 were dropped off in nearly 20 cities including locales as far from the Mexican border as Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.
Immigration experts critical of the Biden administration’s permissive immigration policies believe those numbers are incomplete, especially regarding the most vulnerable migrants, those under 18, whom DHS classifies as “unaccompanied children.” The agency says some 40,000 of the total transported are such minors, but that number is only a fraction of the 147,000 “encounters” the agency reports having with unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border between January and October 2021.
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Paramount among the questions raised by the transports is what happens to the unaccompanied children once they leave the airport? The major cities DHS lists, the experts say, are probably simply way stations rather than final destinations.
“Everyone wants to know where they’re going, but nobody knows,” said Todd Bensman, a national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “Well, somebody knows,” he adds. “The government knows. But they are being as opaque and ‘darkened-windows’ as they can be about the entire matter.”
The lack of information raises a host of questions regarding the health and welfare of the children, and more:
- What security checks are being performed — and background checks to ensure these minors are going to safe homes? How can checks be conducted on family members in the U.S. illegally who wind up taking custody of the children (a problem highlighted in a 2019 study)?
- What processes are in place to ensure that these children have enough to eat, are receiving any necessary medical care, or are enrolled in school?
- What traumas or crimes have they suffered along the way, at the hands of human traffickers, for example, and how are the cases being handled? (Through a public records request, Judicial Watch last year obtained a list of 33 incidents of alleged sexual abuse in a one-month period in 2021.)
- What pandemic precautions have been taken, beyond masks seen in some furtively taken images of the transportees, by an administration that professes to be aggressively dedicated to eradicating COVID-19? (Illegal immigrants dispersed on commercial flights in 2021 were not tested for covid, and agencies did not follow preventive procedures, according to preliminary findings of a DHS Inspector General’s report reviewed by RealClearInvestigations.)
- Who is responsible for making sure the migrants, children in particular, check in with the government and show up for court immigration hearings?
The difficulty of getting answers from the Biden administration is frustrating many state and local officials who say that tracking the thousands of illegal immigrants apparently melting into their communities is a maddening endeavor.
