Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate demands answers on 'secret' migrant flights to home state

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Pennsylvania gubernatorial hopeful demands answers on ‘secret’ migrant flights

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Lou Barletta believes the overnight arrivals of unaccompanied minors at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport would have been kept a secret if they weren’t caught on tape.

Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial hopeful Lou Barletta demanded answers Thursday on "Fox & Friends First" on migrant "ghost flights" that arrived in his state multiple times in December - including on Christmas Day.

"They got caught," Barletta told co-hosts Todd Piro and Kevin Corke. "Nobody was upfront and nobody knew it was happening. And after they got caught, there were crickets for answers."

Barletta claims he received no response from Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf when asked about the unannounced, unpublicized transportation of the unaccompanied minors, fueling concerns about vaccination status and criminal records.

"Where were they going?," Barletta asked. "Shouldn't the people in those communities, those school districts, know?"

FILE - In this Nov. 4, 2020, file photo, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf speaks during a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., regarding the counting of ballots in the 2020 general election. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

Wolf's office told Fox News in a statement Wednesday the migrant flights that arrived at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport on Dec. 11, 17 and 25 were not ending their journey there, instead passing through on the way to their guardians and sponsors.

Wolf's office also emphasized that the flights, which reportedly arrived at the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services, were a federal matter largely out of the governor's control.

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Barletta, a former Pennsylvania congressman running for governor in 2022, argued it's ultimately the governor's job to protect the people of his state.

"That's the governor's responsibility… not to just have blind faith in the Biden administration that they're doing all these checks on people before they come into our communities," he said. "That's what they'll get when I'm the next governor of Pennsylvania."

Fox News' Timothy Nerozzi contributed to this report.