Netizens have trolled White House press secretary Jen Psaki after she appeared to have tried to make a joke when responding to a reporter's question on migrants.
The journalist said he wondered why the Biden administration is reportedly flying "thousands of migrants from the border" to Florida and suburban New York "in the middle of the night".
"Well, I'm not sure that it's in the middle of the night. We are talking about early flights. Earlier than you might like to take a flight", she said in response to Fox News reporter Peter Doocy's remark that the flights took place at "2:30 AM".
Users reacted angrily to Psaki's comment, with one netizen tweeting: "The sh*t that woman says. Who can possibly take her seriously?"
The post was echoed by other sarcastic remarks about the White House press secretary being "so cringeworthy" and "really a disappointment".
The reaction follows the New York Post (NYP) referring to its analysis of online flight-tracking data, which suggested that around 2,000 unaccompanied migrant minors have arrived at the Westchester County Airport, 30 miles north of New York City, on 21 flights since 8 August.
The NYP also cited unnamed sources as saying the purportedly underage migrants were typically bussed to locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, upstate Newburgh, and Bridgeport as well as Danbury in Connecticut.
The newspaper's report comes amid an ongoing migration crisis in the US, with the latest figures from the country's Customs and Border Protection showing that at least 37,805 unaccompanied migrant children have already entered the US.