Planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into suburban New York in an effort by President Biden’s administration to quietly resettle them across the region, The Post has learned.
The charter flights originate in Texas, where the ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local immigration officials, and have been underway since at least August, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Last week, The Post saw two planes 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 piled into buses.
Some of them were later seen meeting up with relatives or sponsors in New Jersey, or being dropped off at a residential facility on Long Island.
A Post analysis of online flight-tracking data suggests that around 2,000 migrants nabbed after sneaking into the US from Mexico have arrived at the airport outside White Plains on 21 flights since Aug. 8.
The clandestine nature of the operation raises questions about how the White House is dealing with surge in unaccompanied minors.
The most recent figures from US Customs and Border Protection show that just during July and August, 37,805 unaccompanied minors were caught entering the US from Mexico — sometimes after being abandoned by professional smugglers known as “coyotes.”
A source familiar with the operation at the Westchester airport said the underage migrants typically arrive carrying backpacks and are bused to locations including The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, upstate Newburgh and Bridgeport and Danbury in Connecticut.
On Friday night, one bus left the Westchester airport and barreled down the Hutchinson River Parkway — which is off-limits to commercial vehicles — at speeds greater than 75 mph before crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge.
Around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, it stopped in Syosset, Long Island, at the campus of MercyFirst, a nonprofit sponsored by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy that provides housing and services for “children and adolescents who are the victims of societal problems,” according to its website.
MercyFirst has a contract to supply the federal government with residential services for “immigrant youth,” according to the site.
MercyFirst CEO Renee Skolaski didn’t return a request for comment.
Later Saturday, a similar scene began playing out in Jacksonville, Fla., where many of the flights from Texas have touched down before continuing on to Westchester — and where The Post saw a Boeing 737-700 land shortly after 10 p.m. at Jacksonville International Airport.
As local cops stood by, a group of between 10 and 15 people wearing matching white baseball caps and carrying duffel bags got off the plane and onto a charter bus near a dormant cargo terminal.
After a two-hour ride, the group arrived around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Twin Oaks Academy, a juvenile detention center in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee, where staffers were waiting to open a gate topped with barbed wire.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed outrage at The Post’s findings, with a spokeswoman saying: “If the Biden Administration is so confident that their open-border policy is good for our country, why the secrecy?”
“Why is the Biden Administration refusing to share even the most basic information about illegal alien resettlement in communities throughout our state and the entire country?” spokeswoman Christina Pushaw said.
“Washington DC sets immigration policies that do not affect them, and states — that lack information about migrant resettlement and do not have the authority to change federal immigration policy — are expected to bear the brunt of Biden’s reckless open-borders agenda.”
