MIAMI -- President Donald Trump on Sunday denied reports that hundreds of migrants will be flown from the Mexican border to Florida and other areas in the U.S. interior to lessen the workload at crowded Border Patrol facilities.
"There are no plans to send migrants to northern or Coastal Border facilities, including Florida," Trump wrote on Twitter, citing what he called "false reporting" on U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Our country is FULL, will not, and cannot, take you in!"
However, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan acknowledged Sunday that federal officials did initially alert local leaders of the possibility that 1,000 migrants could be flown on a weekly basis to Palm Beach and Broward counties, starting in about two weeks. McAleenan said the administration decided not to, however, because it wouldn't have been "an effective use of resources."
"We looked at it from a planning perspective: What's prudent here?" McAleenan said in an interview on CBS' Face the Nation. "We do have stations in Florida. We have stations on the northern border. They're very small stations. They have a few agents that are busy patrolling their areas. There wasn't going to be an effective use of resources. But yeah, we had to look at all options."
McAleenan said John Sanders, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, made the decision to reverse course Saturday. Sanders issued a statement Saturday night indicating that Customs and Border Protection has "no plans to transport people in our custody to northern or coastal border facilities."
The proposed northern facilities were in the agency's sectors of Buffalo, N.Y., and Detroit. The proposed coastal border facility was in the sector of Miami, which includes all of south Florida.
Instead of any of those regions, "we're using the Southwest border sectors for additional capacity," McAleenan said.
In his statement Saturday night, Sanders cited "inaccurate reports in the press" when he stressed that Customs and Border Protection has no plans to transport migrants. Asked to clarify, McAleenan said Sunday that Sanders was referring to reports that flights had already taken off for Florida.
McAleenan said the Trump administration has asked Congress for help "to prevent people from crossing unlawfully and return them effectively."
"Communities all over this country are extremely generous, but they're not ready to receive this flood of immigration," he said.
The statement by McAleenan followed an outcry from Florida officials late last week in response to the suggestion that migrants would be flown to Florida.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday in a tweet that Trump told him he didn't approve and wouldn't authorize flying migrants "who illegally cross the border, to Florida. It is not going to happen."
The governor's spokesman, Helen Ferre, said DeSantis spoke with Trump on Saturday.
DeSantis said such flights would amount to "dumping" migrants on Florida. He appeared upset that Florida was even a consideration, especially after he recently signed a bill banning sanctuary cities and pledging to help federal immigration authorities.
Trump and DeSantis are close. The president's endorsement of DeSantis is widely credited with helping him win the governor's race last year.
INFLUX AT BORDER
The debate comes as the United States is facing a record-high number of migrant families crossing into the country along the southern border. The influx has strained U.S. Border Patrol resources so far beyond capacity that the crisis is spilling into the country's interior.
Border Patrol authorities say they have apprehended an average of 4,500 people each day along the southwest border, and the number of people in Customs and Border Protection custody recently surpassed 17,500.
Because the government has run out of space to process migrants who have been arriving at the Texas border, it began flying hundreds of migrants from Texas to San Diego, to distribute the workload at Border Patrol facilities more evenly.
Once migrants are processed, they are released and given court dates in a city where they plan to reside, often with family members, which could be anywhere in the U.S.
The White House, in November and February, floated a plan to send migrants to sanctuary cities and states, a move seen as retaliation against the president's political opponents. Both times, administration officials rejected the idea.
McAleenan also said Trump's suggestion that the administration is sending migrants to sanctuary cities was incorrect.
"Our transportation is based on operational necessity, capacity to process safely. That's what we're doing," McAleenan said. Some migrants have already been moved from Texas to San Diego, which has a "high-capacity Border Patrol sector," he added.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that McAleenan had said he might leave his post unless he was given more control over his agency amid an attempted shake-up by senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller. One Trump aide likened the internal tensions to an "immigration knife fight."
McAleenan on Sunday disputed that he had threatened to leave over the issue.
"I did not threaten to quit, no," he said, adding: "I'm going to work on solving this problem as long as I have that opportunity. No question."
Information for this article was contributed by Adriana Gomez Licon of The Associated Press; and by Felicia Sonmez, Abigail Hauslohner, Nick Miroff and Isaac Stanley-Becker of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/20/2019