Migrants caught at border bused, flown out of San Diego in possible ‘cover up’ before election: official

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Fox News’ Bill Melugin talks to migrants after a mass release in California

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The federal government has been bussing and flying illegal immigrants caught at California’s overwhelmed southern border out of state instead of potentially reverting to releasing them onto the street over fears it could look bad with just weeks before the November election, one local official said. 

San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said the U.S. Border Patrol informed him that the releasing of migrants was potentially set to resume last week. Around 155,000 migrants were released in San Diego from September 2023 through June, he told Fox News Digital. 

Until June, migrants in San Diego were dropped off at the Iris Avenue train station, Desmond said. Currently, three buses leave the county daily to take migrants to Yuma, Arizona, he said. Additionally, three to four airplanes are flying illegal immigrants weekly from San Diego to the border city of McAllen, Texas, where facilities are not full, the supervisor said. 

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After processing by U.S. immigration authorities, migrants gather as they are dropped off on Sept. 20, 2023 at a transit center to continue their journey into the United States from San Diego. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

“It appears to be the federal government trying to cover up by bussing people out of the area here instead of doing street releases,” Desmond said. “To me, I think the optics of having more people dropped off, or starting that drop-off process again, I think is politically harmful, and so they’re not going to do it until potentially after the election.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Border Patrol. Migrants were being mass released onto the streets of San Diego, overwhelming services and resources, Desmond recalled. 

In addition to the migrants crossing the border, some come by boats, which pull up onto the shore, he said. 

San Diego has long been a favorite border crossing point, in part because of its proximity to Tijuana, Mexico. From Oct. 6 through Oct. 12, the San Deigo Sector reported 3,016 migrant apprehensions from 59 countries, as well as 96 unaccompanied minor encounters.

In a video posted on X, Desmond said the number of migrants coming across the border in the San Diego Sector aren’t as visible, but rather “much more clandestine and a little bit of smoke and mirrors.”

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Migrants seen boarding a plane at a San Diego airport bound for another state.  (San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond )

He noted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, were heavily criticized by Democrats for flying migrants out of their states to other parts of the country.

The Border Patrol has been busing and flying some migrants from San Diego to other cities along the southern border for processing, a reversal from the days when migrants were sent to San Diego to deal with overflow in other locations. 

The Biden administration has been heavily criticized for its border policies. In June, Biden took executive action to limit the number of new entries into the United States. 

That was followed by a sharp drop in encounters by more than 50%. Despite the reduction, Biden still stressed the need for Congress to pass a bipartisan border bill. Vice President Kamala Harris has been repeatedly grilled about the border crisis. 

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In a recent interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Harris touted a 2021 immigration bill she said would have paved the way to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. 

“At the beginning of our administration, within practically hours of taking the oath, the first bill that we offered Congress – before we worked on infrastructure, before the Inflation Reduction Act, before the Chips and Science Act, before the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath, was a bill to fix our immigration system,” she said. 

Desmond said he’s heard from people of both political stripes about the need for the country’s immigration system to have a series of checks and balances. 

“I think even in the Biden administration and people who are Democrats are perplexed as to ‘why are we doing this? Why are we not vetting these people?’” he said. “We want immigration, but we have to be vetting people. It just makes sense to do that.”

A Border Patrol vehicle sits near border walls separating Tijuana, Mexico, from the United States, Tuesday, June 4, 2024, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

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Over the weekend, a group of about 2,000 migrants left Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to head for the U.S. where they will possibly ask for asylum.

Louis Casiano is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to louis.casiano@fox.com.