Last year, the Biden administration secretly flew over 300,000 illegal aliens from foreign airports to 43 airports in the United States, according to recently released U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) documents.
Todd Bensman, a national security expert with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
According to Bensman, the Biden regime flew 320,000 foreign nationals from South and Central America to 43 U.S. airports from January through December 2023. The CBP refused to disclose the names of the U.S. and foreign airports involved in the trafficking.
The agency’s lawyers reportedly cited a general “law enforcement exception” and “the sensitivity of the information” to justify its lack of transparency. Bensman reported that CBP also claimed that disclosing the U.S. airport locations would somehow harm public safety.
In short, the Biden administration’s legally dubious program to fly inadmissible aliens over the border and directly to U.S. airports has allegedly created law enforcement vulnerabilities too grave to release publicly, lest “bad actors” take advantage of them to inflict harm on public safety. Or, more specifically, here’s how CBP’s lawyers, in email communications with CIS and summarized in a CIS Joint Status Filing, characterized FOIA’s law enforcement exception (b)(7)(E) in explaining their refusal to release just the domestic U.S. airport locations:
Exception (b)(7)(E) has been applied to the identifying information for air ports of entry, which, if disclosed would reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports which would, either standing alone or combined with other information, reveal operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures, thereby undermining CBP’s law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders.
The agency’s attorneys gave a similar convoluted explanation for withholding the locations of foreign departure airports, according to Bensman.
Independent media in the past year have reported on the influx of illegal aliens arriving at major U.S. airports.
BOSTON: Illegal immigrants have been sleeping in a special “migrant area” of Logan Airport for MONTHS. @choeshow found out there’s no end in sight.@TPUSA | @charliekirk11 pic.twitter.com/ag6TqcWv5q
— FRONTLINES (@FrontlinesTPUSA) February 29, 2024
O’Hare International Airport in Chicago is overflowing with migrants.
Behind the black curtains are more migrants. What once was a huge hallway is cut down to make space for them.
Every state is a border state now. pic.twitter.com/MMaCJ0Nepa
— Shadow Governor Vos (@Robin_Vos_Stan) October 7, 2023
So I’ve been back in Chicago this past week.
There are illegal migrants scattered all over, like I’ve never seen. They’re even living in Midway Airport, too. Some of them were walking around baggage claim with only socks and no shoes, completely strung out.
It’s out of… pic.twitter.com/Beg5h3fOeU
— Lori Love (@thereallorilove) February 26, 2024
The program is made possible by a phone app that allows migrants to schedule their unlawful crossing into the United States.
The Biden regime made the CBP One app available to foreign aliens via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to circumvent federal law and “streamline” the process of illegal immigration into the United States.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged the Biden administration’s use of the phone apps in a lawsuit last May.
“The Biden Administration deliberately conceived of this phone app with the goal of illegally pre-approving more foreign aliens to enter the country and go where they please once they arrive” said Paxton said in a statement on May 23, 2023. “Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the entire Biden Administration have prioritized creating and protecting new ways for illegal aliens to stream into this country, no matter the cost or consequence to struggling American citizens.”
The purported purpose of the CBP One app is to reduce the number of illegal border entries between ports of entry.
While public officials in multiple cities across the U.S. have blamed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program for the massive influx of illegals in their towns, the bulk of them appear to have been flown in by the Biden administration.
According to Bensman, the program has been offered to citizens in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador. The regime’s parole program gives the foreign nationals legal status for two years makes them eligible for work authorization. The U.S. government supplies all this to non U.S. citizens under the guise of “family reunification,” Bensman said.
While seven of the nationalities, excluding Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, can claim eligibility under older family reunification parole programs, all can also just fly in if they can show they have a non-family financial sponsor (which can even be “an organization, business, or other entity”) and meet other requirements, such as owning a valid passport and passing security checks based on biometric information provided through CBP One.
Once they receive authorization from Washington, the illegal aliens buy airline tickets to U.S. international airports where CBP personnel process them for release in short order. They are allegedly responsible for paying for their own airfare.
According to Bensman, a separate parole program allows illegal aliens “from many dozens of other countries” to get the same parole benefit at eight U.S.-Mexico land ports of entry. That program “has brought in another 420,000 immigrants from nearly 100 nations from May 2021 through December 2023,” according to the CIS lawsuit data.
#BidenExpress in action.
African, Egyptian & Kyrgyz migrants at #ElSalvador’s airport en route to #Nicaragua then to US border.#BidenBorderCrisis business is so good, airlines added flights to Managua. Aiding & abetting human trafficking.@StateDept & @DHSgov where are you? pic.twitter.com/vXiLsZTrpB
— Emilio T. González, Ph.D. (@emiliotgonzalez) February 26, 2024
For most of the past year, big-city mayors and state governors have loudly complained about the hundreds of thousands of foreigners showing up in need of housing, food, medical treatment, clothing, and education, placing extraordinary unfunded financial burdens on local populations. Routinely, politicians and major media outlets have laid blame for the influx on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program.
But the airport location information would undoubtedly provide a more accurate and complete picture of what is happening, though the administration would not be able to blame the Texas governor for these arrivals.
The redacted records received by CIS show a clear preference for some airports over others, with a dozen unnamed facilities receiving most of the 320,000.
Colin M. Farnsworth, CIS’s Chief FOIA Counsel, rejected the Biden Regime’s concerns about bad actors exploiting “operational vulnerabilities” at airports because “CBP pre-screens and pre-schedules the arrival of CBP One applicants at each port of entry.” He said CIS would litigate for a full release of the airport information.
Bad actors already have access to airport travel volumes, through CBP’s own “Traveler and Conveyance Statistics website.” Its statistics for cities whose travails with migrant arrivals are well-publicized show striking airport arrival increases from FY 2022, before the airlift program, through 2023.
Boston airports, for instance, spiked from 2.3 million during FY 2022 to 3.3 million in 2023, the public CBP website shows. Chicago, another migrant hotspot, rose from 6.3 million airport travelers in FY2022 to 7.9 million in 2023. New York City airports spiked from 17.7 million airport arrivals in 2022 to 22.9 million in 2023.
Critics widely view Biden administration’s reckless facilitation of mass illegal immigration as a ploy to win elections as increasing numbers of Americans reject their policies.
“It’s not a coincidence that Joe and Merrick are actively importing illegals while simultaneously making it harder to track who actually votes in US elections,” said legal analyst Phil Holloway on X. “There’s no other reason to oppose voter ID.”
In a post on X Tuesday morning, Billionaire Elon Musk called the regime’s importation of millions of potential voters “treason.”
“Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House,” Musk wrote. “They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote.”
Treason indeed! Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House.
They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote. https://t.co/WhtVFyS6sa
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024
“America will fall if it tries to absorb the world. That is why I am banging the drum so much about this issue,” Musk wrote in a subsequent post.