A Texas-based charter-bus company has temporarily agreed to stop transporting illegal immigrants to New York City and its surrounding areas amid a pending lawsuit filed by Mayor Eric Adams’s administration.
Roadrunner Charters Inc., one of 17 bus companies that New York City sued for $700 million in early January, entered into a stipulation with the Adams-led government on Wednesday to stop dropping off migrants in New York City, New Jersey, and their vicinity. In exchange, the city deferred the litigation against that particular bus company to a later date.
Adams praised the agreement, saying Roadrunner made the right decision.
“New York City continues to do our part as we lead the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, but reckless political games from the state of Texas will not be tolerated,” Adams said in a statement. “We call on all other bus companies involved in this suit to do the same.”
The New York supreme court has yet to take any action in the case.
The Democratic mayor pursued legal action against Roadrunner and 16 other charter-bus companies after migrant-filled buses, sent by Texas governor Greg Abbott, began to drop off their passengers at New Jersey train stations to circumvent one of New York City’s new executive orders.
The emergency order, signed in December, attempted to regulate the inflow of migrants by requiring charter-bus companies to notify city officials of migrant arrivals at least 32 hours in advance, provide manifests of their passengers, and limit drop-offs to weekday mornings in certain designated locations. Rather than deal with those rules, bus drivers dropped off migrants in New Jersey and instructed them to take public transit into New York.
Shortly after the order was signed, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy similarly requested that bus operators give the state notice 32 hours in advance of their arrival.
New York City’s lawsuit against the 17 bus companies was filed, Adams said, to “recoup approximately $700 million already spent to care for migrants sent here in the last two years by Texas.”
Abbott voiced his opposition to the litigation when it was announced two months ago.
“This lawsuit is baseless and deserves to be sanctioned,” Abbott said in a statement. “Every migrant bused or flown to New York City did so voluntarily, after having been authorized by the Biden Administration to remain in the United States. As such, they have constitutional authority to travel across the country that Mayor Adams is interfering with. If the Mayor persists in this lawsuit, he may be held legally accountable for his violations.”
Texas has bused more than 100,000 illegal immigrants who crossed the southern border to several Democratic-controlled sanctuary cities in the past two years. One of those sanctuary cities affected by the Lone Star State’s busing initiative, New York City has received some 37,100 migrants since August 2022.
More than 175,000 migrants have arrived in New York since spring 2022. The record inflow of asylum seekers has overwhelmed Adams’s government to the point that it is facing a $7 billion budget crisis.