After Gov. Abbott Announced He'd Ship Illegal Immigrants to DC, Texas Mayor Has Noticed a Huge Change
Thanks to the border crisis, President Joe Biden’s overwhelmed border security officials have been dropping off illegal immigrants they’ve processed in border towns, including in Texas.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t take kindly to this, particularly since the administration is ending a policy under Title 42 of the nation’s health law that allows for the summary expulsion of illegal immigrants from the country without an asylum hearing.
He announced he was chartering buses to send the illegal immigrants the federal government dropped on the streets of Texas’ cities to the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
On Wednesday morning, a bus from Texas dropped off “dozens” of illegal immigrants blocks from the Capitol, according to Fox News.
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: First Migrant Bus Arrives in D.C., Drops Off Just Blocks from U.S. Capitol https://t.co/MBhrSZdkje
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 13, 2022
And, lo and behold, one Texas mayor has told Breitbart, the government has stopped depositing migrants in his town.
In an interview published Tuesday, Uvalde, Texas, Mayor Don McLaughlin said the federal government is no longer dropping illegal immigrants off in his town 130 miles from the border after Abbott ordered the migrants bused to D.C.
“I think busing the released migrants to D.C. is a great idea,” McLaughlin told Breitbart.
“Let [D.C. officials] see what we are seeing and dealing with in Uvalde.”
Even though the town was told to expect up to 150 migrants per day by the Department of Homeland Security, “the number released never hit that mark,” Breitbart reported.
However, the outlet noted that “it came to a stop completely about the same time as Abbott’s busing order.”
Apprehended migrants are now being processed at Eagle Pass, Texas, and released, according to Breitbart. That could just be shifting the problem around, Breitbart noted.
“Eagle Pass is already facing a large number of migrants being released into its city. In March, Breitbart witnessed the release of a busload of about 50 migrants to a [non-governmental organization] shelter. The driver said he would be following three more busloads in the next hour,” the outlet reported.
That said, Abbott has promised to keep sending migrants up north to D.C., where the politicians who have enabled their release will have to figure out what to do with them.
“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigration who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington, D.C.,” Abbott said during an April 6 news conference.
BREAKING: Texas Gov. @GregAbbott_TX says that Texas will be sending charter buses of illegal migrants to Washington DC:
“The Biden Administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they’re allowing to come across our border.” pic.twitter.com/MWM8IqCici
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 6, 2022
“What better place for them to go to than the steps of the United States Capitol — they get to see the wonderful Capitol, but also closer to the people making the policies that are allowing people to come across the border illegally,” Abbott told Fox News on Friday.
Asked by Fox News host Dana Perino if the migrants had “volunteered” to be placed on buses to Washington, Abbott indicated it would be “kidnapping” for Texas to move anyone who “refuses” to get on a bus.
“There are laws that have to be followed in this process,” he said.
And, according to the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the strategy is working thus far.
“In the last 24 hours, TDEM has dispatched buses to areas where communities have expressed concerns about the federal government dropping off migrants and has the capability to send as many as is necessary to fulfill the requests from mayors and county judges,” said Seth Christensen, chief of media and communications for TDEM, told Fox on Friday.
“From the [Rio Grande Valley] to Terrell County, a large majority of the communities that originally reached out for support through this operation have now said that the federal government has stopped dropping migrants in their towns since the governor’s announcement on Wednesday.”
McLaughlin told Breitbard there are still problems — especially since he told Breitbart he’s been told there are almost 500,000 migrants on the other side of the southern border, waiting for the Title 42 COVID protections to expire in May.
“DHS is still releasing COVID-infected migrants into communities in the area,” McLaughlin said. “In addition, we are dealing with criminal aliens — including sex offenders — police pursuits, and harassment of our residents by migrants moving through the area.”
However, McLaughlin said Abbott has had the town’s back, particularly given the challenges posed by the porous southern border.
“We were having human smuggling pursuits nearly every day,” McLaughlin said. “The governor sent 40 [Department of Public Safety] troopers into this area and shut it down.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill have predictably condemned Abbott’s decision to bus the migrants to their doorstep.
Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said it was an “act of hysteria and grandstanding,” according to a Friday report in the U.K. Daily Mail.
“Those are not problem-solving. They are adding to the grand march of hysteria,” Jackson Lee said.
But therein lies the problem: The Democrats aren’t particularly interested in problem-solving. As far as Rep. Jackson Lee and her cohort are concerned, there’s not even a problem to solve.
The Biden administration has made it clear it has no plans to beef up border security. Instead, it plans to occasionally deal with the amorphous “root causes” of illegal immigration in a vague way, in part to beef up the portfolio of Vice President Kamala Harris,
The Biden administration isn’t interested in a serious solution — and the people of Uvalde, Texas, shouldn’t be the ones bearing the burden of Biden’s lax border policies.
Gov. Abbott is exactly right: The ones who should be facing the consequences are the bureaucrats in Washington whose policies are responsible for this mess. It’s hardly grandstanding to ask them to clean it up.
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