Sen. Tom Cotton accused the Biden administration of hiding the consequences of “their open borders policy” in “the dark of night,” responding Tuesday to The Post’s report that planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into suburban New York.
During an appearance on Fox News, the Arkansas Republican said there was an obvious reason for the secrecy behind the flights, which have garnered backlash from GOP lawmakers.
“The obvious reason why they’re flying these migrants across the country in the dead of night is because they don’t want to reveal the consequences of their open borders policy,” Cotton said.
“So they’re trying to hide the consequences of that policy in the dark night.”
Cotton argued that if the administration were “proud” of their immigration policy and saw the resettlements as a “political winner,” “they’d be having these flights in the middle of the daytime.”
“This is the moral catastrophe of Joe Biden’s immigration policy,” the Republican continued, claiming the administration’s actions at the border are encouraging migrants to enter illegally. “They act like it’s some great moral victory when in reality it’s creating incentives for very dangerous and immoral behavior.”
Last week, The Post witnessed two planes that originated from Texas land at the Westchester County Airport, where most of the passengers who got off appeared to be children and teens, with a small portion appearing to be men in their 20s.
Westchester County cops stood by as the passengers — whose flights arrived at 10:49 p.m. Wednesday and 9:52 p.m. Friday — got off and into buses. Records show that some of the other planes touched down between midnight and 6:30 a.m. — when a voluntary curfew is in effect — with two arriving from Houston at 2:13 a.m. and 4:29 a.m. on Aug. 20.
Throughout his administration so far, President Biden has received bipartisan backlash over certain policy decisions or actions taken regarding the crisis at the border. This year, the southern border has seen record numbers of migrants crossing into the US.
Just last month, Del Rio, Texas, saw nearly 15,000 migrants, according to some estimates, camped under the Del Rio International Bridge at one time.
Local and state officials urged the administration for assistance, citing a lack of manpower among Border Patrol officials and security concerns — particularly terrorism threats.
“All of these migrants should not be in Texas, or Florida, or New York, they should be in Mexico because President Biden should have kept the remain in Mexico policy in place to make sure that people aren’t entering the country with bogus claims of asylum,” Cotton added Tuesday.
“But he rescinded on his first day. Federal courts have told him he has to reimplement it, he’s gonna do that next month, but in the meantime, we’ve had 2 million illegal migrants not just crossed the border, but fanned out across the country.”
Tom Homan, the former director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration went a step further on Tuesday, accusing Biden of actively “facilitating cross border crime.”
“I’ve said many times that the Biden Administration’s the first President or Senator that I know, that is actually facilitating cross border crime, human trafficking, child trafficking, sex trafficking,” he told Fox News.
Homan noted that there is a growing concern on whether these children being transported are in danger.
“This is a serious concern and this administration has not taken the proper steps to protect these children.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended the flights during Tuesday’s daily press briefing, saying it is the administration’s “legal responsibility” to care for the unaccompanied children until they are “swifty unified with a parent or embedded sponsor.”
Earlier in the day, Republican lawmakers took to social media or television hits to bash the secrecy behind the flights.
“Well, their entire political strategy is based on secrecy,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) told Fox News. “What is happening at our southern border is an absolute tragedy. We’ve had over 1.3 million people cross illegally, we are on a path to have over 2 million people cross, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris caused this.”
“Their entire strategy is ignore it, and they are counting on the corrupt corporate media to ignore it as well. So of course they fly in the middle of the night, because they have no defense.”
Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) went so far as to say the president “might as well be on the cartel payroll.”
“The #BidenBorderCrisis has thrown the southwest into chaos. Now Biden is exporting this insanity to the rest of America in the middle of the night on secret charter flights. He might as well be on the cartel payroll,” Hice tweeted.
Without giving a solution, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) posted to Twitter that “This needs to stop!”
“The Biden Admin keeps launching secret flights in the middle of the night dumping off migrants from the southern border to destinations across the US,” he added. “Is there any crisis in the country they aren’t working hard to make worse right now?”