by Bethany Blankley
The Biden administration won’t give members of Congress access to flight manifests of illegal immigrants flown into states from the southern border, Florida Rep. Kat Cammack says.
Those entering the U.S. illegally, violating federal law, are instead being flown into the interior by the U.S. government paid for by taxpayers, a “slap in the face” to all Americans, she says.
“When you look at the flights that are going on, the FAA has refused to give members of Congress like myself and my colleagues access to the manifest,” she told “Fox & Friends Weekend” Sunday. “They are covering this up at the discretion of the administration, and they will not give us information of who is coming in and when they’re bringing them in. And of course, they have to do it in the dead of night because like [U.S. House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, you pass things in the dead of night because you don’t want the American people to know what’s in it. Just like this, [the Biden] administration is flying people into our communities in the dead of night. They don’t want us to know who’s on those planes.”
She added that she agrees with Gov. Ron DeSantis who last week said he would get to the bottom of which federal contractors were flying illegal immigrants into Florida and look into ways the state could ban them from working in the state. He also said he would look into how the illegal immigrants being flown into Florida could be put on buses and sent to Delaware, President Biden’s home state.
Cammack said if the Biden administration wants “these folks in our communities, let’s start by sending them to San Francisco [Pelosi’s home district] and Delaware, where the people in charge are the ones making these decisions. It’s absolutely a slap in the face to every single American who has done things the right way. They pay their taxes. They are good citizens. … So they’re tying the hands of Americans, they are tying the hands of our first responders, and they’re continuing to perpetuate this crisis at the southwest border by encouraging people to come here, and we know that.”
The White House, Customs and Border Patrol, the Department of Health and Humans Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement have not released information about where the flights are going that are transporting hundreds of thousands of people north, including unaccompanied minors, after they entered the U.S. illegally at the southern border.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said that flights transporting unaccompanied minors throughout the U.S. was the federal government’s responsibility.
Psaki told reporters at a press briefing last month after news broke of numerous unaccompanied minors being flown into Westchester, New York, “It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly unified with a parent or a vetted sponsor. That’s something we take seriously. We have a moral obligation to do that and deliver on that.”
She also explained that the flights were part of the policy implemented by the HHS and ORR, which have been overseeing the transfer of unaccompanied minors, working with NGOs in cities throughout the U.S.
Last week, DeSantis learned of 70 flights that had gone into Jacksonville alone.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry also said, “Planes dropping off those that have crossed our borders illegally in the dead of night violates the rule of law. I have been working with Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop this recklessness.
“To be specific, this is happening in Jacksonville without any communication with us. We hear about it after they land.”
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Bethany Blankley is a contributor to The Center Square.
Photo “Kat Cammack” by U.S. House of Representatives. Background Photo “Human Smuggling Attempt” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.