Around 6,000 migrants seeking asylum at the southern border in Texas have been placed on buses for the nearly 2,000-mile journey to New York City.
According to New York City Department of Education officials, around 1,000 of those are school-aged children, and all of them are set to be enrolled in the city’s public school system this fall.
“New Yorkers will not turn their back, and they will not allow Governor Abbott to separate us and divide us,” Commissioner Manuel Castro of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs said at a news conference Friday.
The rift between New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is starting to ramp up as Abbott sends busloads carrying thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelan, to New York City, and nearly 7,000 to Washington, D.C.
The move is described by critics as a political stunt by Abbott to garner the attention of the White House to address the influx of migrants coming to cross the border. Abbott describes it as a “voluntary transportation” plan, arguing they’re heading to sanctuary cities with more resources. In addition, migrants have a better chance of permanent residence in the U.S. by going to New York City than they would have in Texas, according to federal data compiled by Syracuse University.
So far this year, Border Patrol agents have made around 1.82 million arrests at the southern border. In the same time frame last year, that number was 1.66 million. Analysts say full-year arrests are expected to break the 2 million mark for the first time.
Abbott is doubling down on his decision that was announced early this month, despite his feud with Adams, who accuses the Texas governor of using migrants as “political pawns.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey followed Abbott’s lead and began bussing migrants east too. The practice is legal as long as it’s voluntary.
“We’ve got to secure our border because the Biden administration is not securing it,” Abbott told “Nightline” Wednesday. “The reason why we began putting people on buses in the first place is because the Biden administration, they were literally dumping migrants off in small little towns of 10 or 25,000 people, and they were completely overwhelmed.”
Now, Adams and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser say their cities are getting overwhelmed by the influx. While both cities are sanctuary cities and both mayors say they’ll welcome the migrants with open arms, they slammed Abbott for the move.
“Abbott is continuing to play with the lives of human beings,” Castro said when the first few buses arrived. “We think this is cruel, it’s disgusting and it’s pure cowardice.”
Adams is turning to the federal government for resources, arguing the city is already in a housing crisis.
The surge into New York City at the beginning of August was the primary driver of a 10% increase in the city’s Department of Homeless Services’ census. It’s relying on nonprofits like Catholic Migration Services and Catholic Charities of the New York Archdiocese, which provide the incoming migrants with food, clothing and information about city services like shelters, along with legal assistance from immigration attorneys.
However, the nonprofits are sounding the alarm that border officials are addressing court notices for the bussed migrants to random nonprofits in New York, putting migrants at risk of deportation. Since the week of July 11, Catholic Charities said it’s received more than 300 notices telling asylum-seekers to appear in immigration court. If the migrants don’t see that notice and fail to appear, the judge can issue an “in absentia order of removal,” subjecting them to deportation.
The organization even claimed some of the paperwork sent to asylum seekers to made-up addresses with made-up phone numbers, along with hand-drawn emojis, as a way of “mocking” the migrants.
The notices are dated for people who have entered the country in the last several weeks. They have not even made it to New York, many of them,” said Maryann Tharappel, special projects director for immigrant and refugee services at Catholic Charities.
She told reporters at a news conference Tuesday the organization has reached out to federal officials about it but has yet to receive a response. “It’s been very difficult to get the acknowledgment from the Department of Homeland Security. There is an understanding that this is happening at the southern border, but we have not received any sort of response as to whether it has been stopped and what we can do to cure the situation.”
Back in July, Bowser’s office said D.C. was at a “tipping point.” She asked for aid from the D.C. National Guard to convert the D.C. Armory, Joint Base Bolling, Fort McNair or another “suitable federal location in the National Capital Region” into a processing center for them.
The number of people crossing the border seeking asylum we expect to only go up,” Bowser said. “And we need to make sure that there is a national response, not an ad hoc, city-by-city, state-by-state response.”
Bowser said she planned to send a more specific request, and this is the first time she believed D.C. had been denied help from the National Guard. Local charity groups in D.C. are working to feed and shelter the migrants, with help from a $1 million FEMA grant, but Bowser pointed out the city has its own homeless residents to assist.
“[D.C.] cannot handle the number of people coming in,” Abbott said earlier this month. “And all I have is bad news for them, because there are an increasing number of buses leaving every single day going to Washington, D.C. — and there may be some other locations on the horizon.”
Although it may not have been Abbott’s intention, other locations have started seeing busloads of migrants show up unannounced, including Chattanooga, Tenn. City officials said they scrambled to accommodate busloads of migrants — 51 migrants in 48 hours — who they say were just lost and didn’t know where to go next.
They didn’t get a heads up about the arrivals, but instead heard reports from people who spotted migrants near gas stations and hotels, asking for money. Chattanooga’s mayor, Tim Kelly, commended the community’s response and said because Chattanooga was not those migrants’ final destination, charter buses will no longer stop there.
“We have no invested interest in the governor of Texas’ political aims,” said city chief of staff Joda Thongnapnua at a city council meeting Tuesday. “But my understanding is that if folks are getting off in Chattanooga, they were not exactly achieving their political aims.”
Abbott responded by hiring private security to monitor the busloads along their trips, so they don’t hop off the bus before it gets to the final destination. Castro said the security guards on the buses “appear” to be armed.
It’s concerning that Abbott has had to hire and spend a lot of money on a private security firm to keep people in the buses, perhaps against their will, so we’ll be looking into that,” Castro said at Port Authority Wednesday morning. “Again, [Abbott’s office is] not communicating with us. We’re not inside these buses. We only know from what we are hearing from the asylum-seekers who are leaving the buses, what they are telling us.”
Abbott’s press secretary denied migrants are being forced to stay on board, and they’re allowed to disembark at any of the stops on the way. The office added the security measures are to ensure a safe journey. The situation is unclear — Abbott’s office claims all migrants sign waivers acknowledging the program is voluntary, but Castro says people are confused about why they’re being put on the buses.
Adams said early on some of the migrants arriving in New York didn’t actually want to be there, saying they had relatives in other cities, but “they were forced on the bus with the understanding that they were going to other locations that they wanted to go to, and when they tried to explain, they were not allowed to do so.”
Wednesday, Adams made a request under his emergency contracting powers for 5,000 rooms in hotels for migrants headed that way, on top of the 200 already secured. He heavily criticized Abbott again this week, calling his plan “hateful politics” and “anti-American.”
“It’s the worst type of politics. It’s hateful politics to raise his national profile. And you know what, you should not be doing it by taking away the respect and dignity of people who are in need,” Adams told “Nightline.”
Abbott, who’s currently running for reelection in Texas, sent Adams and Bowser a letter at the start of the month inviting them to come to his state to see the situation at the border themselves, in person. Neither took him up on the offer.
Your recent interest in this historic and preventable crisis is a welcome development — especially as the president and his administration have shown no remorse for their actions nor desire to address the situation themselves,” he wrote. “As governor, I invite you to visit our border region to see firsthand the dire situation that only grows more urgent with each passing day, and to meet with the local officials, who like yourselves, realize this matter deserves immediate federal action. I also ask you to join me in requesting President Biden secure the border and put an end to this disastrous crisis.”
With all this feuding between state officials, the question remains: Where’s President Joe Biden on all of this? Press secretary Karinne Jean-Pierre has fielded questions about it in the White House briefing room a couple of times.
Early on in August, she said FEMA is assisting local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the administration is in regular contact with Adams’ administration. But, she concluded, “This is on Governor Abbott. This is what he is doing.”
“Why is he using migrants as a political pawn in doing what he’s doing? There’s a legal process here, and he’s not using that legal process,” Jean-Pierre said. “Instead, he’s using politics for his own benefit and sending these migrants who are here — who are desperately here — to putting them on buses and sending them to cities because it’s politically right for him.”
Biden has been fairly quiet on the subject. It’s unclear if the administration will step in or leave it to the governors and mayors to hash out, but Abbott doesn’t appear to be ending his method any time soon.
“Before we began bussing illegal immigrants up to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all the chaos and all the problems that come with it,” Abbott said. “Now, the rest of America is understanding exactly what’s going on.”