DeSantis Accuses Biden Admin of ‘Unconstitutional’ Illegal Immigrant Flights

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to supporters at the Sheraton Hotel in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 15, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized a Biden administration initiative that involves flying illegal immigrants into the United States.

In October 2022, the Biden administration set up a parole program for illegal immigrants from Venezuela.

Parole allows illegal immigrants to temporarily live and potentially work in the United States without facing the risk of deportation. In January 2023, the program was expanded to include Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. Data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveals that 404,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans arrived via commercial flights to the United States by the end of March 2024 and were granted parole.

According to an April 1 report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), more than 325,000 paroled individuals were sent to Florida.

In a May 13 press conference, Gov. DeSantis slammed the Biden administration’s policy. “What he’s doing is he is ‘paroling people’ in foreign countries and then flying them in,” the governor said.

Miami received a large number of such people since it is “the closest airport to where he’s bringing people from. That was not necessarily the final destination.” The Biden administration “will not tell us where people have gone after that. I don’t even think they know where people have gone after that,” the governor continued.

“So, yes, it’s an unauthorized program. It’s an abuse of the parole provisions of law. We are in the state with the Attorney General suing Biden over this because it’s unconstitutional. It’s a violation of the law and it’s wrong.”

The Florida governor suggested that most of the individuals brought into his state “probably gravitated to sanctuary states because you go to California, you get a driver’s license, you get health care. In Florida, you’re not getting a driver’s license if you’re here illegally. You’re not doing that. So, it’s a different paradigm.”

Out of the 404,000 illegal immigrants paroled into the United States, 168,000 Haitians made up the bulk, followed by 102,000 Venezuelans, 86,000 Cubans, and 77,000 Nicaraguans.

In a statement last month, Gov. DeSantis’ director of communication said that the Biden administration had “cloaked these secretive flights as a lawful parole program.”

The Department of Homeland Security has dismissed such allegations, saying that the program allows illegal immigrants to enter the United States in a “safe, orderly, and lawful way.” Such individuals are required to have “a supporter in the United States, undergo and clear robust security vetting, and meet other eligibility criteria.”

“These processes are publicly available online, and DHS has been providing regular updates on their use to the public,” a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“These processes are part of the Administration’s strategy to combine expanded lawful pathways with stronger consequences to reduce irregular migration, and have kept hundreds of thousands of people from migrating irregularly.”

Florida has approached the court regarding the Biden administration’s parole programs. In March, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II ruled in favor of Florida in a lawsuit against Biden’s immigration policies.

The judge noted that the federal administration “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country.” He called the government’s parole process unlawful.

The administration is seeking to reverse the judgment.

Human Trafficking

At the press conference, the Florida Governor also highlighted the issue of human trafficking. “We’ve had the last three-plus years where the southern border has been open and millions and millions of people have illegally poured into the country. And of course, Mexican drug cartels are utilizing that to do human trafficking. So, this is a big, big problem for the United States,” he said.

“Since 2019, 50,000 reports a year have been made nationwide using the National Human Trafficking Hotline. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the average age of a trafficked individual is only 13 years old. 80 percent of those trafficked are girls. And of those girls, 80 percent are subjected to sexual exploitation.”

The National Human Trafficking Hotline received over 51,000 signals of human trafficking in 2021, out of which more than 13,000 were from victims or survivors of such activities.

According to a DOJ report, the average age of trafficked children was 15 years old in 2020.

Mexican cartels are estimated to be making billions of dollars annually through human trafficking. The criminal networks use this money to hire more soldiers for their narcotics operations.

In a recent interview at “American Thought Leaders,” Chad Wolf, former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now executive director of the America First Policy Institute, said that almost half a million unaccompanied children have been trafficked across the border during the Biden administration.

“These are children that don’t come across with any parent or any guardian, or any family member at all. They are trafficked by the cartels. They are either having to pay a fee upfront or they will have to work that off later,” he said.

“They will have to pay a fee once they get here. Unfortunately, all of these children are being abused, particularly if you’re a female. We have these numbers and know they’re being abused, but the Biden administration hasn’t really done anything about it and hasn’t been putting safeguards in place.”

In February, President Biden’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF), a cabinet-level entity that coordinates the federal government’s anti-trafficking efforts, held a meeting. At the time, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced the HHS National Human Trafficking Prevention Framework, a resource for organizations, communities, and governments to strengthen efforts to prevent human trafficking.

HHS “is fully committed to protecting people from trafficking exploitation,” Mr. Becerra said.

“We want to stop human trafficking before it occurs and minimize its harmful impact. With this prevention framework as a guide, we—working together with federal, state, local, and tribal partners—can do more to prevent the forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation of men, women, and children.”