Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says nearly 9,000 migrants have been bused to NYC and DC

Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office made a statement on Friday confirming that Texas has bused over 7,400 migrants to DC since April and more than 1,500 migrants to New York City since August 5th.

“The busing mission is providing much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities,” the statement read. “Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps left by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border.”

Abbott is sending migrants to Washington and New York in protest at President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

Abbott hit out at Biden again on August 24th regarding this: “Texas is filling the gaps left in Biden’s absence at our border. We’ve made over 19K arrests, seized over 335.5M lethal fentanyl doses, & sent over 7,400 migrants on buses to DC & over 1,500 to NYC. While Biden ignores the crisis, Texas steps up.”

Mayor Eric Adams along with other New York city officials have accused Abbott’s administration of forcing the migrants on to the buses headed to New York, rather than send them to a place of their choosing.

“It’s unimaginable. Come to a country and your first visit here, someone is throwing you out, as the Governor of Texas is doing, then trying to navigate this complex country to deliver your services,” Adams said at a separate press conference earlier on in the month.

Abbott’s office claimed that “to board a bus or flight, a migrant must volunteer to be transported and show documentation from DHS.”

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN during an interview on Thursday that Abbott’s actions of bussing migrants to both to DC and New York is sending the federal system for registering migrants “out of whack.” Mayorkas went on to say that it’s “problematic” when someone in Abbott’s position acts “unilaterally.”

“That lack of coordination wreaks problems in our very efficient processing,” Mayorkas told CNN in Eagle Pass while he was at the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, adding that it’s making the work of DHS “more difficult.”

Mayorkas criticized Abbott for not working with destination cities.  Mayorkas said that the DHS had reached out to Abbott requesting his co-operation, but no reply was received.

“These cities have certain capacities,” he said. “They have infrastructure to address the needs of migrants, and we need to calibrate the movement of people, according to their capacity and their efficiencies. And that is not being done.”