In CBP’s Miami Office of Field Operations, one of Florida’s busiest global flights, where hundreds of thousands of alleged young illegal border crossings are being flown in from international flights in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a covert Biden administration software. Photo by Todd Bensman.
The Department of Homeland Security ( DHS), under the leadership of President Joe Biden, has declined to name the dozens of Americans in public. S. international flights for which it has approved direct planes from overseas for certain illegal aliens. Through February, at least 386,000 workers have been permitted to travel to the interior of the country. S. terminals as part of a constitutionally dubious enrollment system the administration launched in October 2022. The program’s goal is to reduce the number of people crossing the southern border illegally by flying them over it immediately into the inside before releasing them on probation.
However, a Center for Immigration Studies ( CIS ) analysis of the public’s current sources of information on the U.S. S. The Office of Field Operations ( OFO ) airport customs officer encounters with the nationalities chosen for this benefit are highlighted on the Customs and Border Protection ( CBP ) website, which filters out the airports and not necessarily the final destinations, for the most of the landings from abroad.
This preliminary evidence suggests that the majority of these illegal alien passengers reportedly land at international airports in Republican government. Ron DeSantis’s Florida. Florida is actually the best docking and U.S. S. customs handling area for this direct-flights parole-and-release system, tallying at roughly 326,000 of the original arrivals from founding through February.
In addition, smaller amounts are ebbing in the Houston, New York, northern and southern California, and Washington, D.C. C….. , place, the data study reveals. However, the data for Florida indicates that it is the heaviest for primary migrant releases and landings.
Local, state, and national officials in places struggling with immigrant influxes should be informed about where these planes deliver migrants. They could use the knowledge to finance their attention, or complaint the federal government to stop the planes. The knowledge may even keep implications for prosecution by Texas, Florida, and other states that have sued to stop the pardon programs on grounds that the government’s illegal misuse of the narrow legal probation authority has directly harmed them.
This information does not include whether those hundreds of thousands of people stay in those areas or continue flying after their first landing and launch. Many of the Cubans, Venezuelans, and Haitians who are landed there will undoubtedly decide to remain in Florida, where there are already sizable expat communities. But some percentage of the newly “legalized ” aspiring border crossers who land there and in Texas, New York, and California likely transfer to domestic flights to their final destinations across the nation.
That knowledge may be available from DHS. However, this data analysis provides at least some indications of how effective the secretive program has been, which are sometimes referred to as the” CHNV program” or the” Advanced Travel Authorization program” in government documents.
Begun in October 2022 for Venezuelans and expanded in January 2023 to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Colombians, the software approves journey go authorizations for aspiring illegal border-crossers still in other countries to instead arrange commercial aircraft section for themselves over the southern border and then receive temporary but easily renewable “humanitarian parole ” from CBP officials at the airport. The parole program comes with the ability to obtain renewable work permits, which serves as one of the main benefits of deterring people from entering illegal border crossings.
Additionally, the direct-flights parole program announced that Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Ecuadorians would also be eligible for a total of nine nationalities during the year 2023. The Central Americans and Ecuadorians show up in comparatively small numbers for now, having been added in the latter months of 2023, but could increase over time.
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According to filtering public CBP website data from those nine nationalities, which only includes OFO Field Offices that are not on the land border, about 306,505 mostly Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan beneficiaries entered the Miami Field Office jurisdiction, which covers the bottom third of Florida, between FY 2023 and February 2024.
In addition to the 19,490 fliers that were processed through the Miami OFO field office, the Tampa Field Office processed a total of 325,995 Florida presumed humanitarian parole grants. S. customs in foreign airports. 3,821 Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Colombians, and Ecuadoris numbered among those 325,995.
A substantial majority of those showing up in Florida airports, and the other regions, are single adults, but many also arrive in family units.
CBP data reveals that nine nationalities, all of whom opted to fly directly into the United States from abroad, encountered OFO airport customs. S. airports to receive “humanitarian parole ” in the Miami Field Office. This CBP public website data demonstrates the increase from earlier numbers that had previously fallen flat.
Other First Landing Areas
Meanwhile, another arrival destination turns out to be in Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas, which is roughly an average rate of 1,500 per month. Between FY 2023 and February 2024, 21,964 people traveled by air for CBP customs processing at the Houston Field Office ( which also includes Oklahoma ). That field office covers the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, one of the nation’s busiest for travel to and from Latin America.
About 6,600 of those nearly 22,000 people who entered the OFO’s Houston Field Office were Venezuelans, 6,300 were Nicaraguans, 5,400 were Cubans, and 500 were Haitians. Colombians, Ecuadorians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, or Hondurans made up about 3,100.
Also revealed in the data analysis were receiving international airports serving cities whose elected leaders are complaining of crushing unfunded budget burdens from the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in recent years, not all of them by air, obviously. However, some of them were undoubtedly by air as part of this direct-flight parole program.
For instance, the New York Field Office, which would cover JFK and LaGuardia airports, recorded 33,408 OFO encounters with inadmissible aliens from the chosen nationalities for FY 2023 through February 2024.
Some immigrants also are flying into other areas where local leaders are struggling with an immigrant onslaught of resettlement — and loudly petitioning the federal government for relief.
For FY 2023 through February 2024, OFO field offices are located in Los Angeles (8,382 ), San Francisco ( 4,57 ), Atlanta ( 4,555 ), Boston ( 4,879 ), Baltimore ( 3,784 ), and Chicago ( 1,556 ).
These relatively small numbers are likely much higher than this data reflects because some migrant passengers arriving at major international airports as part of this parole program will likely board domestic flights to complete their travels to interior U.S. S. cities hours of additional flight time away.
This OFO encounters data does not include those domestic onward transfer flights. The data also does not show any breakdown for flight arrivals in border states where OFO also staffs land ports of entry. The Tucson Field Office, for instance, saw a sizable increase in the number of nationalities recorded in the corresponding CBP One parole program, rising from 460 in 2022 to 10,550 in FY 2023 and 11,261 just so far in FY 2024.
The humanitarian parole flights program has not been mentioned as a contributor to any of their local mass migration-related issues by Republican governors in Florida or Texas or Democratic Party city leaders angry about the migrants arriving with hands out. The silence is likely because, since its initial quite public announcement, the program drew little media follow-up or clearly delineated government reporting on how many are flying in, where, and became “obscure”, as the Wall Street Journal recently described it, until the Center for Immigration Studies published a recent report about why DHS refuses to disclose more — a report that Elon Musk and Donald Trump amplified.
Mayor of New York City Eric Adams has struggled politically and financially to support an estimated 150,000 people who have arrived since 2022, including those who have largely remained silent about the flights program, which is likely to have brought in more than 33,000 immigrants. Attorney General of Texas has repeatedly and bitterly attributed these arrivals, along with litigation, to Texas Governor. Abbott’s voluntary free busing program offered to migrants released on orders of the Biden administration after illegally crossing the border with Mexico.
In response to news reports that a Haitian who took one of the parole flights from Haiti to New York’s John F. Kennedy has been flown on one of the planes, no politicians in New York or Massachusetts have raised objections. A minor migrant girl allegedly raped by the Kennedy International Airport in a Massachusetts shelter.
Unlike with illegal border-crossers, the federal government can more quickly and easily increase or reduce the flights program on demand because it pre-approves each flight authorization. The Biden administration’s ability to alter this program at will allows New York to deduct at least those 33,000 from the region’s estimated 150,000 residents and lessen the burden of supporting government-funded medical sponsors who also provide education, public welfare assistance, and other material needs.
However, it is very likely that more people who traveled abroad as part of this program than the 33,000 who went through OFO processing in New York and the smaller numbers who flew direct to and from airports further north than Gateway Florida.
Re-Distribution by Domestic Air?
The data that shows smaller numbers in some of these troubled northern cities, such as those in OFO’s Chicago Field Office, refutes the possibility that many people who use the humanitarian flight entry program board domestic flights to which they later fly after landing in Florida and Texas rather than international ones. If that is accurate, it would indicate that much more people are showing up after their protracted travels abroad, including those to Denver, Chicago, and Boston, than what is indicated by this data.
For one thing, the large expatriate populations of Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans who already live in Florida naturally will draw relatives and former neighbors fly into the Sunshine State to stay.
However, those who land there and decide not to stay would take domestic flights to northern cities. Second domestic transfer flights would be impacted by the lack of routes between Latin America and the U.S. S. airports that are completely untouchable and have customs and officials stationed there Some northern cities are too far away from South American airports for nonstop international flights.
This would explain why regional OFO offices in places like Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Michigan show no appreciable change in OFO encounters or why Chicago and Boston don’t show more.
Because applicants for the direct-flight parole program would need to provide destination city addresses for their potential clients, the Biden DHS almost certain to have access to these domestic flight transfer information.
Data Establishes Strong Correlation to the Biden Flights Program
CIS derived these limited findings about some of the airports by filtering publicly available data on CBP’s “Nationwide Encounters ” website, which allows examination of OFO customs agent processing, by nationality, in the 21 OFO field offices. El Paso and Laredo, two airports in these field offices that would include encounters at official land ports with Mexico were not permitted to be used, despite the possibility that international flights may have flown through these airports.
Receiving cities are informed of their rates based on the airports in the states or sectors where OFO customs officers are deployed because OFO field offices or sectors may cover multiple states, cities, and airports. The filtered results reveal OFO customs officer processing activities of those nationalities in non-border jurisdictions that could mostly have occurred inside international airports.
The government’s implementation of the CHNV parole program ( October 2022 for Venezuelans ) is closely related to the government’s increases in numbers that were previously released to the Center. Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Cubans will have January 2023.
In fact, the numerical spikes show up in stark relief, the Miami Field Office a case in point. The field office logged 4,607 encounters of the nine nationalities in FY 2021 and 3,508 in FY 2022 prior to the program’s implementation in 2023.
However, the office recorded a hair-raising increase from that 3,508 in fiscal 2022 for the nine nationalities, the majority of which were Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans.
Haitians processed by U. S. After the Biden administration approved them for flights into the country in January 2023, the Florida customs inspectors noticed a hair-raising spike. Figure from CBP public data website.
Take, for instance, the number of Haitians. Starting with the program’s inception in January 2023, their numbers increased from just 130 in FY 2022 to 68,250 in FY 2023.
Likewise, the next most numerous nationality being processed through the Miami field office was Venezuelans. Their numbers increased from 413 in 2022 to 47,200 in the fiscal year 2023. That spike appeared in November 2022, the day after DHS made the arrangements for their flights. Again, most of the incoming Venezuelans were single adults with family groups a distant second. They have been arriving in Florida on a monthly basis at a rate of 3,000 to 5,000.
In all of these areas, where the nine nationalities first appeared at the U.S. S. customers in foreign airports, the majority of whom were single adults. The majority of them were from family groups.
The Public Interest
However, the full story cannot be fully told by this limited amount of information. Early last year, CIS began looking for airport locations at home and abroad in a FOIA request.
The administration has declined, citing law enforcement exceptions. CIS has filed a lawsuit on the grounds that the government harmed the Freedom of Information Act. The information would be of significant public interest to city leaders, lawmakers, and voting people to demand better planning of budgets and resources for those who might show up in this way, or to demand that federal officials completely reduce or end the flight authorizations.
As for the foreign departure airports, transparency would provide visibility into who the government is actually approving for these flights, enabling reporters and advocates to interview participants abroad about their circumstances and the government’s application processes before the beneficiaries are lost amid general air traffic. The nine nationalities that are eligible for direct-flight parole are ( but they may fly to the U.S. ) S. from anywhere. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
Administration attorneys decline to name those U.S. citizens. S. airports or the international departure airports on 7( E ) law enforcement protection on the grounds that the flights program has created security vulnerabilities that “bad actors ” could exploit if they knew where to go because it has strained security staffing.
There is a chance that those who have nefarious intentions, like those who smuggle drugs, will try to travel to those airports where many of these foreign nationals arrive under these procedures, Assistant U.S. S. During a recent hearing on the subject, attorney Dedra Seibel Curteman testified before a Washington federal judge.
That contention is refuted by CIS.
“It seems illogical and impractical that CBP would implement a program that admittedly caused staffing vulnerabilities at ports of entry,” said Colin Farnsworth, the Center’s chief FOIA counsel. And instead of fixing those flaws to stop bad actors from exploiting them, CBP accepted those flaws to support its inability to withhold information from the American public. “”
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The media allies of Biden tried and failed to to throw away my report.
