(NewsNation) — Exclusive new video from NewsNation Wednesday morning shows adult migrants with zip ties on their wrists, some with children accompanying them, being loaded onto airplanes.
Where do the migrants land? NewsNation has been able to track some going to states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. Other flights have been nearly impossible to track.
Tarps have been put up at the El Paso International Airport where the migrant flights take off.
The process begins with buses showing up inside the airport, where they unload the migrants and place them on planes.
The charter flights, paid for by the federal government, started boarding migrants bright and early Wednesday morning in El Paso.
From there, migrants and children were flown and bused to several regions nationwide. NewsNation noticed that some of the children with the adults with zip-tied wrists appeared visibly shaken.
NewsNation has been watching the migrant flights all week long. Some are impossible to track, but others we’ve monitored. One flight full of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border flew to Jacksonsville, Florida.
Our cameras were there when the plane landed and migrants got on buses at a rest area and then traveled south on I-95.
The press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said they are aware of the migrants being moved to Florida, but the federal government is not giving them specifics.
“I got money from the legislature, which will be available starting in June. So that if (President Joe) Biden is busing illegal aliens into our state, we’re taking those buses and rerouting them to Delaware and other jurisdictions,” DeSantis said.
NewsNation has reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health & Human Services, which coordinate the migrant flights. HHS told NewsNation they have a legal requirement to provide care for all unaccompanied children in their custody, but they did not elaborate on the flights. ICE also did not answer our specific questions.
The charter flights had been used previously, including under the Trump administration, but appear to be more frequent now due to the recent influx of migrants at the border.
