A surprising new report reveals that a number of states have been pressured by the Biden Administration to deal with unlawful immigrants at airports — together with at Logan in Boston, the place Massport warned of security dangers from migrants sleeping on the ground.
“We simply do not have facilities at BOS sufficient to operate as an intake center” for unlawful immigrants, Massport warned federal transportation officers in a sequence of emails.
The data was simply revealed by the Senate Commerce Committee, entitled “Flight Risk: How Biden-Harris Border Policies Threatened America’s Airport & Aviation Security.” The investigation was opened in October 2023 by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), then-Rating Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, after he acknowledged potential threats that might come from permitting thousands and thousands of undocumented folks into the nation.
The Herald reached out to Massport’s Director of Media Relations, Jennifer Mehigan, for touch upon Wednesday on the discharge of those emails and the committee’s findings. Mehigan declined to touch upon security-related particulars, however informed the Herald the airport didn’t present any providers to the migrants except for serving because the shelter location.
“Logan Airport was used as an emergency space when the state’s shelter system was over capacity. The airport did not provide any services to the migrants — they arrived late afternoon or evening, stayed in an unused public space in Terminal E, and were transported back to the state’s welcome centers in the morning,” Mehigan informed the Herald.
“Massport coordinated with MA State Police to ensure the migrants remained in a public area, and not interfering with the traveling public or other airport business. Massport made staff available who spoke Haitian Creole and Spanish to assist, and we coordinated all efforts with the state,” she stated.
The Herald additionally requested remark from Gov. Maura Healey’s workplace and the whole Massachusetts federal delegation. None of them responded to our request.
The committee said Tuesday that the Biden-Harris Administration’s insurance policies heightened safety dangers at airports in 3 ways:
Pressuring Airports
First, the committee says the administration pressured at the least three airports in Democrat-led cities, together with Boston Logan, into housing the migrants at their services. Not less than eight extra airports have been finally pressured by the White Home to deal with migrants as extra poured into the nation.
“When asked by the administration to house aliens, the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), Logan Airport’s operator, insisted that doing so would pose security and operational risks. The FAA, along with Democratic state and local officials, overruled Massport’s warnings and allowed aliens to sleep overnight in Logan airport terminals for more than a year,” the report said.
“The Biden White House, including in meetings between White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and Secretary Pete Buttigieg, went further and attempted to divert the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its agencies away from their statutory missions to instead facilitate the administration’s radical immigration policies,” it stated.
The report additionally highlighted inside emails between Massport and FAA officers from October 6, 2023, the place Massport warned concerning the heightened dangers to safety by housing migrants.
“We have received a request from the WH to determine if there are available facilities on airport or surrounding areas… To provide assistance with additional human intake in [Boston and other cities]. This is an immediate ask so please prioritize this effort,” the FAA staffer wrote.
Massport pushed again on the strain from the feds, warning that Boston Logan was not geared up to be an alien “intake facility.”
“We are not designed, or resourced, to manage the intake of migrant populations. Although I do not know what “intake” means, precisely, primarily based on what I see occurring at different home airports (e.g., ORD) this is able to create an untenable scenario for us to not point out a big diversion of State Police and ARFF/EMS assets,” wrote the Massport official in an e-mail reply.
“Although I sincerely appreciate the challenges that this emergency has presented, [it] will create a host of unintended safety and security consequences if we were to also become a migrant intake facility while simultaneously operating New England’s largest commercial service airport,” the official continued.
One other DOT staffer responded, joking concerning the content material of the e-mail change, saying, “Yikes, this is definitely Fox News fodder in the making.”
The committee additionally says the Biden White Home ordered the Division of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct a list of obtainable services to deal with the migrants, whether or not they have been owned by the federal authorities or not. The White Home additionally requested the Federal Motor Service Security Administration (FMCSA) and state officers to trace bus firms transporting migrants from the southern border, to create pamphlets informing migrants of their rights, and ordered the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to coach native transit officers on how you can use federal grants to move the migrants.
When Massport arrange the housing space in Terminal E of the airport, the committee says state officers requested the company to start “processing and tracking” migrants via an consumption type,” beginning in January 2024. Massport once more pushed again on this request, citing a “significant burden” an consumption type would impose on workers operations. The report couldn’t affirm if Massport ever processed migrants via an consumption type, however did hold monitor of whether or not migrants have been “repeats” or new arrivals.
Then, in July 2024, the state applied a coverage banning migrants from staying in a single day on the airport, with Gov. Maura Healey saying, “We’ve never thought that Logan was an appropriate place for people to be staying overnight.” However, the governor’s personal phrases to the general public are contradictory to inside paperwork uncovered by the Committee, which discovered that even after July 2024, some migrants have been allowed to sleep in a single day at Logan.
Utilizing Unreliable Information
Second, the committee discovered that the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) had been utilizing “unreliable data” from the CBP One app to confirm the identities of unlawful immigrants. The Committee discovered that in only a single day in November 2023, the TSA used the app to course of 1,778 vacationers with out identification.
Moreover, the investigation confirmed that the TSA didn’t monitor the variety of migrants allowed to fly after failing to current acceptable identification between April 2021 and March 2024.
Diverting air marshals to the southern border
Third, the Committee discovered that whereas the Biden-Harris administration by no means declared an emergency on the Southern Border, they diverted federal air marshals away from their common posts to the Southern Border to help within the ballooning immigration drawback.
The report says air marshals have been assigned to the border, “some involuntarily, for a month or more at a time.”
Responding to the report, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X, slamming the Biden Administration for having “zero regard for the safety of American citizens.”
“While our military veterans were sleeping on the streets, Biden & Buttigieg cared more about housing illegal immigrants in our airports FOR FREE. Zero regard for the safety of American citizens. UNBELIEVABLE,” Duffy posted on Tuesday. “Thank God for @POTUS who is ending this nonsense & prioritizing the American people. And thanks to @SenTedCruz’s leadership, the public now knows that Mayor Pete and Joe Biden were using the DOT to advance their open border agenda.”
The Committee wrapped up its report by concluding that the Biden-Harris Administration “caused mass chaos and insecure conditions at the country’s busiest airports,” by selling and permitting unlawful immigrants to encamp at them.
