Washington, D.C. – (April 1, 2024) - A Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of available public information reveals the areas that might account for most of the landings from abroad, allowed to fly to interior U.S. airports carrying illegal aliens, as part of a legally dubious admissions program the administration launched in October 2022. The Center is presently involved in litigation with DHS to obtain the names of the specific airports being used as part of the "CHNV program" or the "Advanced Travel Authorization" program.
The analysis reveals:
- At least 386,000 illegal migrants have been allowed to fly to interior U.S. airports as part of a controversial admissions program launched in October 2022.
- Florida emerges as the top landing and processing zone, with 326,000 initial arrivals.
- Lesser numbers are landing in Texas, New York, and California, with small numbers distributed across multiple states.
- Texas is receiving an average rate of 1,500 per month. In total, some 21,964 arrived by air for CBP customs processing in the Houston Field Office (which also includes Oklahoma) from fiscal 2023 through February 2024. They included about 6,600 were Venezuelans, 6,300 Nicaraguans, 5,400 Cubans, and 500 Haitians; about 3,100 were Colombians, Ecuadorians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, or Hondurans.
- The New York Field Office, which covers JFK and LaGuardia airports, received an estimated 33,408.
- Other CBP field offices (FY 2023 - 2/2024): Los Angeles (8,382), San Francisco (4,578), Atlanta (4,515), Boston (4,879), Baltimore (3,784), and Chicago (1,556).
“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,” said Todd Bensman, a national security fellow at the Center and author of the post. “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.”
Andrew Arthur, the Center's fellow in law and policy, writes in a related posting that the program permitting entry to hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens "is likely the most important administration program you’ve never heard of because not only is it is ‘obscure’, it’s also 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."
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