Headline Roundup • March 12th, 2024
Report Claims 320,000 Migrants Flown to US Airports Through Government Program
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) claimed that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has approved “secretive flights that last year alone ferried hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens from foreign airports into some 43 American ones.”
Details: The report cites data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to conclude that at least 320,000 migrants flew to U.S. airports in 2023 under a government program. The government declined to reveal the airports used in the program, stating that revealing the locations could “reveal operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct.” This led the CIS report to conclude, “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.”
How the Left and Center Covered It: Many, including The Hill (Center bias), NewsNation (Center bias), The Washington Post (Lean Left bias), and ABC News (Lean Left bias), republished an article from the Associated Press (Lean Left bias) calling the report “unfounded” and based on “false information.”
How the Right Covered It: Right-rated outlets focused on the number of migrants cited in the report and the government’s comment regarding “vulnerabilities.” Outlets also reported on the response from Republican lawmakers, including a letter from House Republicans demanding Biden end the program.
Featured Coverage of this Story
AP Photo / Mark Schiefelbien, File
In his Super Tuesday victory speech, former President Donald Trump elevated false information that had gone viral on social media, claiming the Biden administration secretly flew hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States.
Many post sharing the claim referred to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for immigration restrictions. It said the administration refused to list individual airports where people arrived under a Biden “parole” program that allows Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to stay in the U.S. for two years.
U.S....
Image Via David McNew/Getty Images
On March 4, 2024, the claim that the Biden administration had secretly flown 320,000 migrants into the U.S. in 2023 went viral. That claim originated from a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank. The report, and its assertions, gained significant exposure when the Daily Mail covered it and Elon Musk shared the Daily Mail article on X (formerly known as Twitter). Former U.S. President Donald Trump also repeated the claim in his Super Tuesday victory speech on March 5, 2024.
The central assertions made by CIS,...
Anadolu via Getty Images
Joe Biden's administration has admitted transporting migrants on secret flights into the U.S. and lawyers for its immigration agencies claim revealing the locations could create national security 'vulnerabilities'.
Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose information about a program last year secretly chartering flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities.
It means that while record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country.
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