Congress slams Biden administration for forcing airports to house migrants

A shocking new report reveals that multiple states were pressured by the Biden Administration to house illegal immigrants at airports — including at Logan in Boston, where Massport warned of safety risks from migrants sleeping on the floor.

“We simply do not have facilities at BOS sufficient to operate as an intake center” for illegal immigrants, Massport warned federal transportation officials in a series of emails.

The information was just published by the Senate Commerce Committee, entitled “Flight Risk: How Biden-Harris Border Policies Threatened America’s Airport & Aviation Security.” The investigation was opened in October 2023 by Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, then-Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, after he recognized potential threats that could come from allowing millions of undocumented people into the country.

The Herald reached out to Massport’s Director of Media Relations, Jennifer Mehigan, for comment on Wednesday on the release of these emails and the committee’s findings. Mehigan declined to comment on security-related details, but told the Herald the airport did not provide any services to the migrants aside from serving as the shelter location.

“Logan Airport was used as an emergency space when the state’s shelter system was over capacity. The airport did not provide any services to the migrants — they arrived late afternoon or evening, stayed in an unused public space in Terminal E, and were transported back to the state’s welcome centers in the morning,” Mehigan told the Herald.

“Massport coordinated with MA State Police to ensure the migrants remained in a public area, and not interfering with the traveling public or other airport business. Massport made staff available who spoke Haitian Creole and Spanish to assist, and we coordinated all efforts with the state,” she said.

The Herald also requested comment from Gov. Maura Healey’s office and the entire Massachusetts federal delegation. None of them responded to our request.

The committee stated Tuesday that the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies heightened security risks at airports in three ways:

Pressuring Airports

First, the committee says the administration pressured at least three airports in Democrat-led cities, including Boston Logan, into housing the migrants at their facilities. At least eight more airports were eventually pressured by the White House to house migrants as more poured into the country.

“When asked by the administration to house aliens, the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), Logan Airport’s operator, insisted that doing so would pose security and operational risks. The FAA, along with Democratic state and local officials, overruled Massport’s warnings and allowed aliens to sleep overnight in Logan airport terminals for more than a year,” the report stated.

“The Biden White House, including in meetings between White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and Secretary Pete Buttigieg, went further and attempted to divert the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its agencies away from their statutory missions to instead facilitate the administration’s radical immigration policies,” it said.

The report also highlighted internal emails between Massport and FAA officials from October 6, 2023, where Massport warned about the heightened risks to security by housing migrants.

“We have received a request from the WH to determine if there are available facilities on airport or surrounding areas… To provide assistance with additional human intake in [Boston and other cities]. This is an immediate ask so please prioritize this effort,” the FAA staffer wrote.

Massport pushed back on the pressure from the feds, warning that Boston Logan was not equipped to be an alien “intake facility.”

“We are not designed, or resourced, to manage the intake of migrant populations. Although I do not know what “intake” means, exactly, based on what I see occurring at other domestic airports (e.g., ORD) this would create an untenable situation for us not to mention a significant diversion of State Police and ARFF/EMS resources,” wrote the Massport official in an email reply.

“Although I sincerely appreciate the challenges that this emergency has presented, [it] will create a host of unintended safety and security consequences if we were to also become a migrant intake facility while simultaneously operating New England’s largest commercial service airport,” the official continued.

Another DOT staffer responded, joking about the content of the email exchange, saying, “Yikes, this is definitely Fox News fodder in the making.”

The committee also says the Biden White House ordered the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct an inventory of available facilities to house the migrants, whether they were owned by the federal government or not. The White House also asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and state officials to track bus companies transporting migrants from the southern border, to create pamphlets informing migrants of their rights, and ordered the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to educate local transit officials on how to use federal grants to transport the migrants.

When Massport set up the housing area in Terminal E of the airport, the committee says state officials asked the agency to begin “processing and tracking” migrants through an intake form,” starting in January 2024. Massport again pushed back on this request, citing a “significant burden” an intake form would impose on staff operations. The report could not confirm if Massport ever processed migrants through an intake form, but did keep track of whether migrants were “repeats” or new arrivals.

Then, in July 2024, the state implemented a policy banning migrants from staying overnight at the airport, with Gov. Maura Healey saying, “We’ve never thought that Logan was an appropriate place for people to be staying overnight.” But, the governor’s own words to the public are contradictory to internal documents uncovered by the Committee, which found that even after July 2024, some migrants were allowed to sleep overnight at Logan.

Using Unreliable Data

Second, the committee found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had been using “unreliable data” from the CBP One app to verify the identities of illegal immigrants. The Committee found that in just a single day in November 2023, the TSA used the app to process 1,778 travelers without identification.

Furthermore, the investigation confirmed that the TSA did not track the number of migrants allowed to fly after failing to present acceptable identification between April 2021 and March 2024.

Diverting air marshals to the southern border

Third, the Committee found that while the Biden-Harris administration never declared an emergency at the Southern Border, they diverted federal air marshals away from their regular posts to the Southern Border to assist in the ballooning immigration problem.

The report says air marshals were assigned to the border, “some involuntarily, for a month or more at a time.”

Responding to the report, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X, slamming the Biden Administration for having “zero regard for the safety of American citizens.”

“While our military veterans were sleeping on the streets, Biden & Buttigieg cared more about housing illegal immigrants in our airports FOR FREE. Zero regard for the safety of American citizens. UNBELIEVABLE,” Duffy posted on Tuesday. “Thank God for @POTUS who is ending this nonsense & prioritizing the American people. And thanks to @SenTedCruz’s leadership, the public now knows that Mayor Pete and Joe Biden were using the DOT to advance their open border agenda.”

The Committee wrapped up its report by concluding that the Biden-Harris Administration “caused mass chaos and insecure conditions at the country’s busiest airports,” by promoting and allowing illegal immigrants to encamp at them.

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