Biden Admin. Resumes Secret Charter Flights of Young Migrants From Southern Border to New York

The Biden administration has resumed its secret charter flights of underage migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border to Westchester, New York.

Another group of young, undocumented immigrants from El Paso, Texas landed at the Westchester County Airport on Thursday night, the New York Post reports.

The children then boarded three buses waiting for them, with one traveling to the Walt Whitman Service Area in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where several teens disembarked and met up with adults who were waiting for them just after midnight.

Former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, called the resumption of flights ‘a big middle finger to hard-working New York taxpayers.

‘It’s frustrating. It’s outrageous,’ he told the Post.

Just last week, Astorino filmed another set of young migrants leaving the airport last week as part of the after-dark flight program, which was reportedly suspended following an investigation last year.

Analysis of online tracking data suggested that 21 flights, since August 8, have brought around 2,000 migrants caught after crossing the border from Mexico to the Westchester airport.

A White House official said that the flights were being used to ‘transport unaccompanied minors to vetted sponsors or relatives with whom they will await the outcome of their immigration proceedings.’

The Department of Health and Human Services, which helps match the young migrants to sponsors, said in a statement: ‘It is our legal responsibility to provide safe, appropriate care to unaccompanied migrant children during the time they are in our custody, and that includes transportation to vetted sponsors.’

Astorino had previously released bodycam footage of Westchester Police responding to one of the secret charter flights last year.

In the August 13, 2021 footage, Westchester Police Sgt. Michael Hamborsky is seen questioning federal contractors, who are overseeing migrants embarking and boarding American Dream charter buses in the early morning hours on the tarmac of a Westchester Airport.

The footage shows Hamborsky speak to multiple contractors, who are employees of MVM Inc., a private security firm that signed a $136 million contract with the federal government last year to transport undocumented immigrants and unaccompanied children around the country.

‘I’m just trying to figure out what’s what, who’s who and how I’m supposed to keep this secure,’ Hamborsky tells the contractors, who give him the lanyards from around their necks.

‘We’re not allowed to have our picture taken when we get on base,’ one of them tells him.

‘Un-f**king-believable,’ Hamborsky says. ‘And who’s that by? DHS?’

‘Yes, and the United States Army,’ the contractor replies. ‘You’re on a federal installation but DHS wants everything on the down low.’

The continuation of the flights from the Southern border to Westchester comes as the U.S. saw an average of nearly 6,000 people a day crossing the border in February, according to the most recent data from the US Customs and Border Protect.

On Friday, 21 states signed onto a lawsuit against the Biden administration to stop it from lifting the Title 42, aTrump-era policy that allowed instant expulsion of asylum-seekers at the U.S. southern border.

State officals fear lifting the order would bring in a greater flux of migrants into the U.S. after President Joe Biden had announced last month that the policy would end on May 23.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who joined the suit on Friday, said in a statement: ‘Ending Title 42 would be a disaster and further the chaos at the southwest border that is making it easier for drug cartels and human smugglers to advance their illicit practices in our country.’

In February, 55 percent of the more than 164,000 migrants encountered at the border were expelled under the order.

Reporting from The Daily Mail.

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