A newly released Senate Commerce Committee report alleges that the Biden administration pressed U.S. airports to house migrants inside terminals, hangars, and other aviation facilities, despite serious security and safety concerns.
According to the New York Post, the 47‑page document titled Flight Risk claims the White House instructed several federal agencies to “inventory available facilities” and divert federal resources to shelter or process migrants.
Highlights
- A Senate report alleges the Biden administration pressured airports to house migrants despite security and safety concerns.
- At least 11 major airports, including Boston Logan and Chicago O’Hare, were used to shelter migrants under this policy.
- Internal emails reveal federal staff raised alarms, noting the policy risked becoming a political issue.
Those agencies included the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).
Joe Biden allegedly pressured airports to house migrants despite concerns
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The report cites internal emails from federal staff raising alarms, including one from an FAA official to Massport on October 6, 2023, as per the New York Post.
“We have received a request from the WH to determine if there are available facilities on airport or surrounding areas … This is an immediate ask so please prioritize this effort,” the email read.
Another DOT employee allegedly responded, “Yikes, this is definitely Fox News fodder in the making.”
The document identifies at least 11 airports — including Boston’s Logan, Chicago O’Hare, and New York’s JFK — that were used to house migrants.
According to the New York Post, FAA officials, the report says, recognized that such use would usually need federal approval under grant-assurance rules.
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Instead, the document notes, they “ignored them most of the time when airports used their facilities to house aliens.”
The report also quotes Massport, which operates Boston Logan, warning federal counterparts: “We are not designed or resourced to manage the intake of migrant populations… this would create a host of unintended safety and security consequences.”
Despite this, at Boston Logan, up to 352 migrants were reportedly housed overnight in Terminal E, costing around $779,000 in security, cleaning, and transportation.
At Chicago O’Hare, according to the report, around 900 migrants were sheltered in a shuttle terminal between April 2023 and February 2024.
During that period, police logged 329 service calls and made 26 arrests for issues including theft, disorderly conduct, and, reportedly, one death investigation.
The report also draws attention to a 2024 security breach at JFK Airport involving an immigrant from Ecuador, Kleber Loor-Ponce.
It stated that Loor-Ponce ran past a security post into ‘the secure area at [JFK],’ toward two runways, and when he was detained, he was found in possession of a box cutter and a pair of scissors.
The report further noted that the directives extended beyond airports and involved additional support efforts tied to the movement and processing of migrants.
The document said that FMCSA was instructed to help prepare a “Know Your Rights” pamphlet for bus passengers and to work with states tracking bus companies that were transporting migrants.
Officials at the time raised security concerns over the plans
The FTA was also encouraged to remind local transit agencies that federal grant funding could be used to move migrants, according to the report.
The committee described these assignments as “a dangerous diversion” of federal transportation resources.
“The Biden-Harris administration made airports and aviation less secure by allowing and encouraging aliens to shelter at U.S. airports, by allowing improperly vetted aliens to fly into and throughout the United States, and by diverting needed federal air marshals to the border,” the report said.
Senator Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, told Fox News, “This report exposes how the Biden Department of Transportation conspired with local leaders in New York, Boston, and Chicago to house migrants in airport facilities at taxpayer expense.”
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“Their decisions – to transport illegal aliens through airports without identity checks, even those with felonies — shows in new detail how Biden’s open border policy coopted government agencies to put American citizens at risk.”
The report comes after concerns were raised about the use of U.S. airports for migrant processing and transportation as early as 2023 and into 2024.
Documents obtained by the House Homeland Security Committee, released in April 2024, revealed that over 50 airports were being used under the CHNV (Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan) mass-parole program.
These flights reportedly brought more than 400,000 people to U.S. airports by April 2024, with the subpoenaed documents showing that roughly 200,000 of them arrived between January and August 2023.
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The committee said that many of those flown in are “inadmissible by definition,” calling into question the legality of their entry.
Those revelations follow reports that, in 2023, the Biden administration offered a list of 11 federally owned sites as potential housing for asylum seekers arriving in New York City, including Atlantic City International Airport.
That proposal met strong local opposition, with South Jersey officials warning that the airport lacked infrastructure and resources to handle large migrant populations.
Republican members of the Senate Commerce Committee had already expressed alarm last year over what they called “sanctuary airports” housing migrants and had pressed the FAA to step in and ban the practice.