Florida goes to war over Biden migrant flights: Ron DeSantis' office and AG vow to battle the 'secretive' program and make sure state is an 'undesirable destination for anyone in the country illegally'

Gov. Ron DeSantis is fighting back hard against a program that allows President Joe Biden's administration to fly migrants to Florida without notifying officials first and wants to make Florida 'undesirable' for illegal immigrants.

The Biden administration's CNHV program allows 30,000 undocumented migrants to be released into the country every month. And a new analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on Monday reveals a vast majority of migrants flown into the U.S. are landing in Miami.

Lawyers for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) refused earlier this year to disclose in a FOIA request which airports migrants arriving on the program were landing after boarding flights in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CNHV).

The CIS report provides insight into their landing airports, which includes as the highest traffic areas Florida, New York, Texas and California.

Not only are states not alerted when more migrants are being flown there, the White House also makes it difficult for officials in those states to monitor incoming migrants and track them after they land.

'The federal government is encouraging illegal immigration and even aiding these individuals to enter the country,' DeSantis' Communications Director Bryan Griffin told DailyMail.com. 'They've cloaked these secretive flights as a lawful parole program.'

Florida is fighting back hard against these policies, Griffin noted.

And DeSantis' Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern added: 'The efforts in Florida are making this state an undesirable destination for anyone in the country illegally.'

'Since taking office, Governor DeSantis has championed the state's efforts to enact private-sector E-Verify, increase penalties for human trafficking and smuggling, and crack down on illegal aliens who commit crimes,' Redfern said.

From January 2023 through February 2024, approximately 326,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela arrived in Florida, according to the latest report.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody vowed to 'continue to fight the CHNV program in court' and accused the Biden administration of 'disproportionately taxing the resources of certain states.'

Florida has filed or joined five cases challenging Biden's use of 'parole' to release illegal aliens into the country.

The two filed in Florida were won with the court ruling that the Biden administration cannot use parole authority in this way. But the federal government appealed the decisions and they are now pending in the 11th circuit.

DeSantis is one of the most staunchly anti-illegal immigration governors in the country.

He sent Florida State Law Enforcement personnel to the southern border to assist with security operations.

The governor also flew migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard in a huge symbolic sign attempting to prove that while Democrats want the U.S. to take in migrants to their communities, they do not want them in their ritzy, liberal enclaves.

Lawyers for Biden's immigration agencies did not disclose data on which airports were receiving the undocumented migrants in the CNHV program, claiming it would compromise safety and create national security 'vulnerabilities.'

While the latest analysis reveals the eight cities with the highest number of arrivals, CBP revealed last month that the flights landed in at least 43 different American airports from January through December 2023.

Texas already bears a large brunt of the migration crisis with thousands of illegal immigrants entering through the southern border every day. But the Lone Star State is also receiving the second-highest number of migrants through Biden's flight program.

Through February, 21,964 undocumented migrants were flown to Houston since January last year. Nearly 13,000 were flown to California through the airports in either Los Angeles or San Francisco.

The remainder of the almost 15,000 other migrants who gained entry into the U.S. through this program during the time period arrived at airports in Boston, Massachusetts; Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; and Chicago, Illinois.

The New York Field Office, which includes JFK and LaGuardia airports, logged 33,408 OFO encounters with inadmissible aliens from the chosen nationalities from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Todd Bensman's analysis notes.

Biden's Department of Homeland Security insists its CHNV program is not secretive in nature.

But the volume and location of migrants arriving was not previously disclosed and CIS had to submit a FOIA request to gain insight into the program and do its own analysis to reveal where the migrants were landing in the U.S.

CHNV allows 30,000 migrants to apply through the CBP One app for asylum. each month and be flown on taxpayer dollar to the U.S., as long as they have a sponsor who passes a background check. The undocumented migrants are given a two-year grace period to obtain status and in the meantime can live and work lawfully in the country on 'humanitarian parole.'

The CIS analysis filters Office of Field Operations (OFO) airport customs officer encounters with nationalities in the CHNV program through public information available on the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website.

While the data shows where the majority of these migrants are flown, it does not necessarily represent the individuals' final destinations.

The CNHV program was initially implemented to help take the pressure off of southern border crossings with Mexico where thousands of asylum seekers arrive daily to turn themselves into border agents.

But Republicans and border hawks are not content with the bypass of the border as a way to create the optics that the crisis is quelled. They claim that the program instead allows hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to be released into the U.S. each year – and this time on taxpayer dime.

Biden's plan to deflect the crisis from the southern border did not work and now migrants are entering the U.S. en masse both through border crossing and in the CNHV program.  

Last month, shocking images emerged when Texas State Troopers and National Guard clashed with hundreds of migrants who rushed a crossing point in El Paso, Texas.