Washington.- US federal authorities have been transporting migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Canada border to Texas as part of a deterrence effort to deal with a surge in crossings, according to authorities, flight logs and a Reuters witness.
According to a Reuters agency dispatch, the United States Border Patrol (USBP) has quietly transported about 100 migrants this month on two charter flights from Plattsburgh, New York, near the Canadian border, to the Texas cities of Harlingen and El Paso.
The southbound flights from the northern border are a break from past practice as the United States faces a sharp increase in immigrants crossing illegally from Canada, current and former officials told Reuters.
At the same time, asylum seekers have been crossing from the United States into Canada in record numbers, straining resources. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to raise migration issues with US President Joe Biden during meetings in Ottawa on Thursday and Friday.
The United States Border Patrol apprehended nearly 2,900 people who crossed illegally from Canada into the United States in the five months since October, more than all of fiscal year 2022. About half of them were Mexicans, who do not need a visa to travel to Canada.
Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Border Patrol’s parent agency, said he did not recall the agency using charter flights for migrants caught crossing from Canada.
“The whole northern border issue was not that much on the radar,” he said.
A CBP official told Reuters that 48 immigrants, 47 Mexican and one Colombian, were flown from Plattsburgh to Harlingen on March 13 for repatriation, calling it “the consequence of crossing illegally.”
CBP did not comment on a second flight from Plattsburgh to El Paso on March 21. A Reuters witness saw about 50 migrants disembark from the plane, including men and women in shackles and three adults with a child and an infant.
CBP declined to say whether the migrants were removed to Mexico under the COVID border restrictions known as Title 42. The restrictions will end May 11 along with the COVID public health emergency, but the Biden administration expanded their scope earlier in this year to discourage crossings. .
Reuters learned about the flights from Thomas Cartwright, an advocate with the Witness at the Border group that tracks US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter flights that were used to move migrants.
Cartwright said that given the relatively high cost of the flights, it appeared that they were intended to “deter and send a message”.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union of agents, said he was told that plans for a third flight next week were now uncertain amid cost concerns.
Still, Judd said the vast majority of migrants caught at the northern border are released until they appear in federal immigration court.
“That is what caused more and more people to go to the northern border to cross into the United States,” he said.
