Change of plan: DeSantis balks, CBP flies migrants to California

Never mind about that plan to send illegal migrants to Florida. Thanks to some strong pushback from Governor Ron DeSantis, a loyal Trump supporter, the city of San Diego became the latest destination.

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With record numbers of people apprehended at the southern border, the Trump administration decided to relieve the overcrowding of detention centers at the border and fly detainees to other places. First, President Trump threatened to move them into sanctuary cities, which sounded like a reasonable idea to me. Then a plan was discussed to fly migrants, mostly families, to Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida. Those two county governments, run by Democrats, were not happy with the burdens presented with that decision. The governor was angry and pushed back. Governor DeSantis, a former congressman, blamed Congress for the problems in the immigration policy and the Border Patrol for the decision. He didn’t place any blame on President Trump.

“This was not something that came down from the White House. This is something that came out of the agency,” DeSantis said, referring to the Border Patrol. “Sometimes this stuff happens. Ultimately this is something I’m going to have to talk to the president about

“We cannot accommodate in Florida just dumping unlawful migrants into our state,” DeSantis made it clear he opposed the idea. “I think it’ll tax our resources, schools and health care, law enforcement, state agencies.”

DeSantis said that Florida cooperates with the federal government and releases illegal aliens into federal custody. The state legislature is outlawing sanctuary cities and counties in Florida through legislation. He took a jab at Congress for its inaction in dealing with illegal immigration.

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DeSantis said the problem of a large number of migrants at the border with Mexico is the result of years of ineffective government policy. He said Congress needs to fix the immigration system.

“The disaster that we’re seeing at the border, that is a disaster created by the policies that were enacted by the Congress of the United States,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have begun flying migrant families from the Rio Grande Valley to San Diego, California. As many as 135 people are expected to be on three flights each anticipated to be scheduled every week. The agency also began flying migrant families from the Rio Grande Valley to Del Rio, Texas five times a week. All of this air travel is unusual, but the crisis at the border calls for extraordinary measures to deal with the influx of such large numbers of people. The detainees must be moved to places that can process them.

It is rare for the Department of Homeland Security to fly undocumented immigrants between temporary holding centers in the United States just after crossing the border, and before they have been processed by the Border Patrol.

Given a court ruling that prohibits the government from detaining immigrant children for more than 20 days, the migrant families are likely to be given a notice to appear before an immigration judge, referred to a nonprofit organization and released into the public.

The government is not required to send migrants to places where they might have relatives. Customs and Border Protection officials said migrants would be sent to processing centers that would be best able to process them quickly.

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Hey, isn’t California a sanctuary state? Yes. Yes, it is. California looks like a good place for migrant families to go. If they are released “into the public” and told to come for a hearing when they receive a notice but disappear instead into who-knows-where in the state, well, that shouldn’t be a problem for such an open border loving state, right? The woke California legislators who pander for votes and create this kind of dangerous policy for their state should be held responsible.

Migrants are being bused from the Rio Grande Valley to Laredo, Texas. Other cities are being discussed as options for processing them. Detroit, Miami, and Buffalo, New York all have processing centers that could provide relief for the overcrowding at the border.

The changes were outlined by Customs and Border Protection officials who were not authorized to discuss them publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They said migrants could be sent to processing centers in unidentified coastal regions and the northern border with Canada if the number of immigrants coming to the United States continued to surge.

With catch and release now in effect, the detainees are usually released to non-governmental organizations and charities who provide local assistance. When these facilities are at capacity, though, that leaves the only other option for CBP, which is to drop them off at bus stations or transportation hubs nearby. 180,000 family members have been released into cities since December 2018, often at bus stations. With the number of illegal migrants detained at the border continuing to reach record levels, there is no relief in sight. As long as both political parties continue to be unwilling to work together for immigration reform, the humanitarian crisis at the border will continue.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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