Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies Todd Bensman said Tuesday on Fox News that Democrats want to “undermine” President Donald Trump’s deportation enforcement efforts, adding that Haitian migrants had attempted to hijack a deportation plane under former President Joe Biden.
Since Trump took office, Democrats have pushed back against his plans for mass deportations of illegal migrants living in the U.S., despite U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeting “criminal aliens,” including rapists and murderers. On “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham asked Bensman why “liberal do-gooders” would be upset over migrants being handcuffed and shackled. Bensman said the Biden administration previously attempted to deport migrants unrestrained.
“A big takeaway is that the Biden administration decided to deport all those Haitians unrestrained. That’s mistake number one. After the Haitians rioted on those first planes, they then mutinied on the ground and took over buses that were taking them to Laughlin Airfield,” Bensman said.
Bensman went on to say that he had been “on the ground” during the crisis, interviewing migrants and a pilot who showed him the damage to the plane. The senior fellow said that the migrants “kicked the bus driver out, took control of the bus, then drove themselves into the desert and ran away.”
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“That happened multiple times, and there were other attempted hijackings on the ground at Laughlin Air Base. So it was the Biden administration that smartened up and did what Tom Homan is doing right now, which is making sure that they’ve got leg irons on and shackles, not all of them, but some of them,” Bensman said. “One other thing I would mention here is that the category of deportees today are criminal aliens by and large. Those are the ones you least want to trust 40,000 feet up.”
India’s parliament was disrupted on Feb. 6 after opposition lawmakers protested President Trump’s treatment of 104 Indian illegal migrants, calling it “unacceptable” to have the migrants’ arms and legs shackled for the entire flight, according to CBS News.
“The advantage that they’re after really is they’re saying ‘Stop the flights, stop the flights’ because the flights are incredibly impactful. When those Haitians were shipped off out of that camp, I was on the Mexican side, and thousands fled that camp back into Mexico. They said that they were fleeing because they did not want to be deported,” Bensman said.
“Everybody knows that deportation flights are absolutely the most profoundly impactful tactic that the U.S. government can deploy to deter illegal immigration. Everybody knows it, and they want to undermine it,” Bensman said.
Just weeks after Trump’s inauguration, illegal migrant crossings at the U.S. southern border fell to unprecedented lows, forcing migrant shelters across the border and throughout the U.S. to close their doors.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”The Ingraham Angle”)
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