In my interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week, he criticized the Biden administration over billing US citizens for evacuations out of Israel's war zone, noting that the administration has flown countless illegal immigrants all over the United States at taxpayer expense. He contrasted that approach with Florida's efforts to fly hundreds of Americans to Tampa on chartered aircraft, flatly stating that this rescue service comes at no charge.
In case you missed it, here's how NBC covered the DeSantis administration's evacuation push:
LEADERSHIP: 270 Americans — including 91 children — were brought home from Israel last night in rescue operations organized by the DeSantis Administration.
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) October 16, 2023
Listen to the stories of those rescued: pic.twitter.com/wCNvO6Jx6A
Here's my exchange with DeSantis about Florida's decision not to charge Americans for being rescued:
DESANTIS: So, we answered a need of people that had been stranded in Israel as the war broke out and were not able to get out of the country. They did not have much luck with the embassy or the State Department. So, last week, I did an executive order. We scrambled our emergency management resources, and we were able to arrange flights. And we did work with the Israeli government, so that these flights could get in there. And so the first flight was 270 Americans, mostly Floridians, but, honestly, not all, because there was people that were desperate. And, like, I’m not going to turn some — we’re all Americans here. So we did that...we’re going to have more planes, definitely — probably two more. We think that there’s between 500 and 1,000 Floridians that need transport back. One of the things we’re also going to do is, what the feds have decided to do is, OK, we’re going to work to get you out of Israel, but they’re basically dumping people in Greece. Well, the problem is, is, like, these folks, they don’t know anything about Greece. They need to get back to the United States. So our planes will likely stop in Greece and help load up some people who are stranded there by the federal government.
BENSON: So you’re helping to pull American citizens, many Floridians out of Israel, and then also out of Greece. My understanding, Governor, is that the Biden State Department, under their policy, is, they’re charging people for the cost of getting out. So they’re being evacuated by boat and other means. And then, OK, if that’s what the federal government’s doing for you as a U.S. citizen, you have to sign a note, basically, promising to pay them back, some sort of fee to get them home. Number one, are you charging the people on these flights to Florida? Let’s start with that.
DESANTIS: No.
BENSON: Number two, what do you make of that policy? It seems like the federal government spends a lot of taxpayer dollars on a lot of different nonsense. Strikes me as maybe a good use of taxpayer money to get American citizens out of a war zone and not charge them.
DESANTIS: Yes, I mean, think about it. I mean, how many illegal aliens have they flown to different places in this country at no charge? How many governments, local governments, state governments have put illegal aliens in really nice hotels? They’re not charging them for anything like that. So it just shows the ruling class yet again putting Americans last. This is not something that’s high on their agenda. And so they’re not going to do — do what needs to be done, whereas some of the other stuff, like settling illegals throughout our country is. So they’re going to spare no expense and they’re going to get that done. So I think it’s pathetic. And it does show. The people that have come on the Florida flights, they were genuinely appreciative of just showing leadership and not getting bogged out in the bureaucracy, not making any excuses. But they definitely — you could tell, there was definitely a lot of dissatisfaction with how the federal government has handled this.
Left-leaning 'fact-checking' organization Politifact says the Biden administration's requirement of American evacuees to sign a promissory note to reimburse the government is a matter of US policy and law, in place for decades. But here's quite a lot of leeway and discretion in the mix, it seems:
As thousands of Americans try to flee Israel amid a war, the State Department has offered U.S. citizens the opportunity to get a chartered flight — if they pay. Many commercial airlines canceled flights to and from Israel after it was attacked by Hamas, leaving tens of thousands of Americans in the country with few options to evacuate. Hundreds of Americans also are stuck in Gaza. The State Department said Thursday that it would charter flights out of Israel to Europe, and the U.S. Embassy in Israel said citizens will be "asked to sign an agreement to repay the U.S. government prior to departure." ... We researched the policy’s origins and found it predates Biden’s administration by decades. The policy was used in World War II and became law 67 years ago. At some points in history, American evacuees did not end up paying the transportation costs, but it’s unclear whether the requirement will be lifted for people leaving Israel now.
...We could not determine when this policy started or why it became a law in 1956. The law requires U.S. citizens to reimburse the federal government for evacuation when their lives are endangered by war, civil unrest or natural disaster. The State Department website says people evacuated on U.S. government-coordinated transport must sign an Evacuee Manifest and Promissory Note (form DS-5528) before they leave. The form says the travelers know they will be billed for the cost. Payment is due within 30 days, but citizens can pay in installments, given State Department approval...Searching news reports, we found multiple examples of the law being cited. Sometimes the repayment requirement was waived...[including] in 2021, the State Department initially said it would charge U.S. citizens $2,000 to evacuate from Afghanistan, but it backtracked.
The story lists other examples of this reimbursement 'requirement' being waived in the 1980's (El Salvador), 1990's (Iraq and Kuwait), 2000's (Lebanon), and 2010's (Libya, Afghanistan). In practice, the Biden administration is clearly not legally bound to seek payment from the Americans being pulled out of Israel amid this war. They should follow previous precedent and eliminate the billing policy in this case. As DeSantis noted, they should really do so, given their policy of flying many thousands of illegal immigrants from the southern border to American cities of their choosing over the past two-plus years. Here's just one such example from 2021:
More than 2,000 migrant children have been flown to New York since June, landing at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, and many in the area say the Biden administration has failed to answer questions regarding what is going to happen to them next. Two senior U.S. officials confirmed that flights to the New York area have increased as the number of migrants — minors in many cases — coming to the country's southern border have greatly increased this year. The officials told NBC New York that the numbers arriving in the U.S. are the largest in 15 years. "It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly unified with a parent or vetted sponsor," said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Another, from 2022:
Dozens of single, mostly male adult migrants were shuttled from a makeshift processing center in Texas to a local airport for flights to various US cities — marking the first time such a transfer has been captured on video amid the ongoing border crisis, according to a report Tuesday. The scene began unfolding Sunday outside a parking garage in Brownsville, where a makeshift processing center was set up in a vacant office, Fox News said. A video recording shows a line of men and women being escorted into the office, after which some of them left and got into taxi cabs that arrived to pick them up. Fox News said it followed the cabs to Valley International Airport in Harlingen, about 30 minutes away, where some of the migrants reportedly said they’d been smuggled across the border with Mexico after paying a criminal cartel $2,000 each. The migrants said they were headed to Atlanta, Houston and Miami, Fox News said.
Whatever one thinks of any of these policies -- and we have been rightly and aggressively critical of Biden's insane border policies -- in what universe is it fair or just to drop untold sums of taxpayer cash to shuttle illegal and quasi-legalish foreign nationals around on flights, while telling American citizens to sign documents pledging to pay Uncle Sam back for their evacuation from an active war zone abroad? In this case, the Americans potentially in harm's way weren't even in a country where the State Department had warned against travel or urged US citizens to leave. This war came out of nowhere, the result of a deadly surprise attack. Biden administration defenders can cite a 1956 law until they're blue in the face. That law, and related policies, have been jettisoned on numerous occasions, and ought to be waived again here.