Three buses from Texas dropped off more than 100 migrants near Vice President Kamala Harris’s home in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve, the latest in a series of transports this year from border states to Democrat-run cities to the north.
The three buses with about 130 migrants traveled 36 hours from Texas to Washington, D.C. They were initially slated to travel to New York City, but were rerouted to the nation’s capital due to road closures and frigid temperatures, the New York Times reported.
The buses, sent by the Texas Department of Emergency Management, stopped outside the Naval Observatory, where volunteers with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network welcomed the migrants, provided them with food and warm clothes, and transported them to a local church, according to media reports. Temperatures in Washington, D.C., dipped into the teens Saturday, with single-digit wind chills. Some of the migrants were wearing shorts and T-shirts when they arrived, according to media reports.
Texas governor Greg Abbott has been busing migrants to Democrat-run cities such as Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago since April, part of an effort to highlight the immigration crisis at the southern border. The effort is also to protest the Biden administration’s move to end Title 42, a pandemic-era policy the Trump administration began using to expel illegal immigrants to prevent the spread of communicable disease. The Supreme Court paused the expiration of Title 42 last week.
In a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday, Abbott wrote, “your inaction to secure the southern border is putting the lives of migrants at risk, particularly in the City of El Paso.”
“With thousands of men, women, and children illegally crossing into Texas every day, and with the expectation that those numbers will only increase if Title 42 expulsions end, the state is overburdened as we respond to this disaster caused by you and your administration,” Abbott wrote. “Your policies will leave many people in the bitter, dangerous cold as a polar vortex moves into Texas.”
In a Christmas Day statement, the White House condemned Abbott for sending the buses north. “Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, according to the Times. “This was a cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”
Amy Fischer, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, which received the migrants in Washington, D.C., also called Abbott’s actions cruel, according to ABC-7 News. “People are getting off the buses, they don’t have coats, they don’t have clothes for this kind of weather, and they’re freezing,” she told the Washington, D.C., news station.