In the latest salvo of a months-long effort by Republican governors to urge the Biden administration to bolster its immigration policy, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bussed illegal migrants to Vice President Kamal Harris’s Washington, D.C., residence late on Christmas Eve in the freezing weather.
Although the initial two busloads were taken to local shelters, as witnessed by an administration official, more buses arrived outside Harris’s official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO).
Some of the dropped-off migrants were wearing only T-shirts in 18 C weather but were later helped by the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network which has given them blankets and took them to a local church.
According to Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, they were prepared for Saturday night’s arrivals, having been informed about it earlier by an NGO working at the Texas border.
Fischer, who noted that the buses were supposed to go to New York but were diverted to DC due to the weather, said that the arrivals included asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, and Colombia.
This is the latest of several instances in which Gov. Abbott has bussed migrants to Washington, D.C. since he initiated his widely criticized practice in early spring, sending migrants from border cities to the nation’s capital in an effort to pressure Washington to act on immigration enforcement and border security.
In a letter to President Biden on Tuesday, he stressed that Texas has borne a lopsided burden caused by his administration’s open border policies and cited freezing temperatures as his reason to transport the migrants with the Texas migrant housing facilities already at capacity being forced to release migrants outside onto the streets.
Gov. Abbott has warned Biden that, as a polar vortex moves into Texas, his policies will leave many people in the bitter, dangerous cold.
Democrats blasted the latest drop off of immigrants in the freezing weather that will, most likely, intensify the feud over immigration, especially as Title 42 hangs in the balance.
Calling it a cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt by Gov. Abbot, White House assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan accused him of abandoning children by the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any Federal or local authorities.
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