Since instituting a program to allow migrants to be flown to interior U.S. airports, an endeavor that began in October 2022, at least 386,000 migrants have entered the U.S. via flights.
As border authorities continue to be overwhelmed with the surge in migrants, this program, which the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) calls a “legally dubious admissions program,” was enacted to allow certain foreign nationals the ability to enter the U.S. then be released on parole.
New analysis by CIS shows the overwhelming majority of migrants arriving by plane are landing in the Republican stronghold of Florida.
“Public knowledge of where these flights deliver migrants should matter to local, state, and national leaders in cities struggling with migrant influxes, who could use the information to financially plan for their care, or petition the federal government to stop the flights,” wrote Todd Bensman, CIS Senior National Security Fellow, in a report about the program.
“The information may also hold implications for litigation by Texas, Florida, and other states that have sued to stop the parole programs on grounds that the administration’s illegal abuse of the narrow statutory parole authority has directly harmed them,” he added.
Under the Biden administration’s CHNV program (also termed “Advanced Travel Authorization” program), the top receiving cities are:
- Miami – 326,000
- Houston – 21,964
- Los Angeles – 8,382
- San Francisco – 4,578
- Atlanta – 4,515
- Boston – 4,879
- Baltimore – 3,784
- Chicago – 1,556
The data is unclear about whether the hundreds of thousand of new arrivals remain in the city in which they land or if they travel elsewhere.
Previously, CIS has cautioned that the CHNV Parole program — which authorizes entry for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan foreign nationals — is “vulnerable to exploitation by criminals, traffickers, and grifters, and adds a New Orleans-level of population to the country each year — all through executive fiat.”
Once on U.S. soil, there is little authorities can do to expel them, which acts as a magnet drawing ever more migrants.
“Neither Republican governors in Florida or Texas, nor Democratic Party city leaders angry about the migrants showing up with hands out, have mentioned the humanitarian parole flights program as a contributor to any of their local mass migration-related problems,” Bensman says.
He explained that their silence could be due to the fact that since its “initial quiet public announcement,” the program got little media attention or government reporting on how many are flying in and where they were going.
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