Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., on Thursday demanded the Biden administration secure the nation’s southern border — and explain why unaccompanied minors caught there are being secretly flown to New York.
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Zeldin railed at the flights, first reported by the New York Post, that originate in Texas, where an ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local authorities, and have been underway since August.
“It was a secret. Some of these flights come in the middle of the night. There’s no heads up,” he complained, a transcript of the remarks showed. “Now if you want to question the administration once you find out about it they’ll say, ‘well this isn’t a secret.’ Yeah, but none of us knew that it was going to happen.”
“We have questions in regards to what kind of vetting took place, and who are these people an how many of them are over 18, how many people are under 18,” he continued. “We know that people are illegally crossing the border. We see the pictures, the video of migrants at the border, and all of a sudden they’re not there anymore.”
“We know that you’re not sending them all back so we have questions about where they’re going, who they are,” he said.
Zeldin said the arrivals are complicating existing problems in New York.
“We have issues on Long Island, challenges in this country, related to drug trafficking, human trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and we need a secure border,” he said. “Here in New York state, though, we have all of these people coming in and they’re coming in the dead of the night and we’re not getting answers.”
Zeldin went on to lament that over $2 billion in COVID-19 relief was sent to Albany and yet lawmakers “created the highest income tax rate in the whole country to help pay for it.”
“These are concerns of hardworking, law abiding Americans,” he added. “Costs are real, and the impact and quality of education is real too.”
He said lowering taxes represented “a great example of how you can come up with billions of dollars. I can think of many other examples as well. But they shouldn’t have even created this multibillion dollar fund which required [raising] taxes. People are fleeing state saying ‘you think you’re raising my tax rate? I’ll move to Florida. Guess what? You lowered my tax rate to zero.”
