Bus from Texas drops migrants in Washington DC after Greg Abbott pledge

By William On Apr 14, 2022

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was ‘nice’ that Texas was giving migrants a free ride on Wednesday when asked about the news that the first bus had arrived from Texas at the nation’s capital after Gov. Abbott’s new immigration plan to fight back at what he says is the federal government’s lax border policies.

The Republican governor announced last week that he would direct the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) to charter busses to send migrants released from federal custody into Texas to Washington, D.C.

The first bus pulled up around 8 a.m. on Wednesday just blocks away from the Capitol building at Union Station, in front of the building that houses Fox News, NBC and C-SPAN. The migrants had come from the Del Rio sector in Texas and had traveled to the U.S. border from Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

‘These are all migrants who have been processed by CBP and are free to travel and its nice Texas is helping them reach their final destination as they await immigration proceedings,’ Psaki said.

The press secretary added: ‘Immigration policy and law is overseen by the federal government.’

After the bus arrived, migrants disembarked one by one, checked in with officials who cut off wrist bands whey were wearing and were told they could go, according to Fox News.

A second bus is currently en route to Washington, the governor’s office said in a press release.

Some had predicted that the governor was bluffing, and the legality of his plan is still in question. The White House dismissed it as a ‘publicity stunt’ last week and Texas GOP state Rep. Matt Schaefer called it a ‘gimmick.’

Asked of the plan last week, Psaki said: ‘I’m not aware of what authority the governor would be doing that under. I think it’s pretty clear this is a publicity stunt.’

The first bus of migrants arrived at Washington, D.C. from the Del Rio sector in Texas. The bus dropped off migrants blocks from the Capitol

After the bus arrived, migrants disembarked one by one, checked in with officials who cut off wrist bands whey were wearing and were told they could go

A second bus is currently en route to Washington, the governor’s office said in a press release

Each bus is equipped to carry up to 40 migrants on the 34-hour journey to D.C.

State officials said they will charter ‘as many buses as we need’ to send migrants on the 28-hour journey from the border to D.C.

A 2012 Supreme Court case, Arizona v. U.S., prevents states from making their own immigration policies.

Abbott said that migrant communities would want to be bussed to D.C.

He told Fox News hosts Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer: ‘When they come across the border, it’s not like they want to stay in the Rio Grande Valley.

‘They are moving across the entire country.

‘What better place to go to than the steps of the United States Capitol – they get to see the beautiful Capitol, and get closer to the people making the decisions.’

Abbott said that if President Biden would not visit the border himself to see the scale of the problem, the governor would ‘take the border to him.’

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said of the first bus’s arriving: ‘Republican leaders don’t see immigrants as human. Just props to get some laughs and clicks.’

‘And let’s be 100% clear. The idea was to savage Biden and Democrats no matter what they did,’ he wrote on Twitter.

The second prong of Abbott’s new immigration plan is border agents are now stopping and searching every single vehicle that comes across the border for smuggled migrants.

Psaki slammed the new vehicle checks for causing supply chain issues in a statement Wednesday.

‘Governor Abbott’s unnecessary and redundant inspections of trucks transiting ports of entry between Texas and Mexico are causing significant disruptions to the food and automobile supply chains, delaying manufacturing, impacting jobs, and raising prices for families in Texas and across the country,’ she said.

‘Local businesses and trade associations are calling on Governor Abbott to reverse this decision because trucks are facing lengthy delays exceeding 5 hours at some border crossings and commercial traffic has dropped by as much as 60 percent.’

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) too hit out against Abbott, claiming his ‘unnecessary’ stop-and-search policy ‘will impact consumers and businesses nationally.’

After backlash, Abbott eased the state inspections causing delays at one commercial bridge after striking a deal with Nuevo León Gov. Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda. Truckers crossing at the Laredo-Colombia bridge had waited up to three hours to cross, far longer than the average wait time of about 15 minutes on a Wednesday afternoon.

As part of the deal, Texas Department of Public Safety will no longer inspect every commercial truck on the Laredo-Colombia bridge as long as Nuevo León had its own checkpoints on its side of the Mexican state’s 9-mile-long border with Texas. Abbott’s inspections will continue for cargo coming from three other Mexican states that border Texas.

Cargo trucks wait to cross to the United States during a blockade at the Jeronimo-Santa Teresa international crossing that connects Ciudad Juarez to Santa Teresa to protest against the exhaustive inspections carried out by the US, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on April 12

Abbott announced last week that every truck crossing into the U.S. would need to be stopped and search by border agents

Mexican truck drivers block the Pharrâ¿”Reynosa International Bridge connecting the city of Reynosa to McAllen, Texas, to protest truck inspections imposed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in Reynosa, Mexico April 11

‘The border region is going to be lit at night in prominent smuggling areas to make it easier to detect any illegal activity that is taking place.

‘If you’re a caravan organizer, and you think you can overwhelm a site of entry, we’ll be waiting for you.’

The new aggressive measures come as the Biden administration announced that Title 42 will be allowed to expire on May 23. Democrats and Republicans have warned of a mass onslaught of migration once the Covid-19 health restriction that is used to expel most migrants is allowed to expire.

Even Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Abbott for the governor’s seat, urged the Biden administration not to end the policy without a plan.

‘It does not make sense to end this until there is a real plan and the capacity in place to handle those and address those that come over,’ O’Rourke told the Texas Tribune on Tuesday. ‘I have yet to hear a plan from the Biden administration to address the dynamic we will have on the border once Title 42 ends.’

Since Biden took office in January 2021, CBP has encountered more than 2.2 million migrants and the border – and that number could as much as triple with the end of Title 42 next month

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have warned that 18,000 migrants could try to cross the border per day once Title 42 is allowed to expire.

And amid news that the Biden administration would extend the mask mandate on public transit another two weeks, Sen. Tom Cotton wrote on Twitter: ‘Joe Biden is dropping COVID restrictions for illegal immigrants at the border. But he’s extending the mask mandate for Americans on planes. Talk about putting Americans last.’

The mask mandate will be extended another two weeks beyond April 18. Title 42 expires May 23.

GOP members of the House Oversight Committee recently took a trip to the southern border

GOP lawmakers look on as migrants line up at the southern border looking to enter the U.S.

House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Comer, R-Ky., second from right, who recently traveled to the border, said that one migrant was carrying what looked to be a Louis Vuitton bag and the selfies showed the migrants were unafraid to illegally cross into the U.S.

Republicans from the House Oversight Committee recently visited the border to survey facilities.

‘This week, several Oversight Committee Republicans visited the southern border in San Diego and Yuma. We saw firsthand how President Biden’s border crisis is a national security, public safety, and humanitarian catastrophe. President Biden must end his lawless border policies that are fueling the crisis. He needs to keep Title 42 in place, finish the border wall, end catch and release, and implement other deterrent-focused immigration policies to end his self-made border crisis,’ House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Comer, R-Ky., told DailyMail.com.

Migrants were caught taking selfies at the unfinished border wall. Comer, who led the trip to the border, said that one migrant was carrying what looked to be a Louis Vuitton bag and the selfies showed the migrants were unafraid to illegally cross into the U.S.

‘That shows a lack of fear. They’re breaking the law, they’re here illegally,’ Comer told Fox News Digital. ‘But yet they’re taking selfies on their Apple phones with their Louis Vuitton purses and Nike shoes, and they’re ready to be escorted to their next visit.’

Meanwhile one of the Biden administration’s new enforcement policies is to give migrants smartphones when they are released intro the U.S. to track them. There is, however, no way to stop these migrants from getting rid of the phones.

Since March 2020 when Trump enacted Title 42, the policy has been used to expel migrants from the country close to 1.7 million times, mostly being used for single adults. Progressive activists have called on Biden to end the policy, and he held out until this month when he announced its end.

The measure, which dates to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health law instituted in 1944, provides U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s U.S. Border Patrol agents the authority to turn back migrants without allowing them the opportunity to apply for asylum because they were deemed a threat to spread COVID-19 in the country.

A Mexican government official fears there will be chaos unless the Biden administration comes up with a clear plan on how to handle the onrush of nearly 140,000 migrants seeking asylum once Title 42 is lifted next month.

As many as 4,000 migrants are currently staying at shelters in the border town of Tijuana while about 1,500 are housed in shelters in Mexicali as the clock ticks down toward May 23.

Tens of thousands of additional migrants are in Chiapas near Mexico’s southern border city awaiting humanitarian visas from the country.

Aerial view of an improvised camp of Ukrainians seeking asylum on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Crossing port in Tijuana, Mexico, on April 2

Temporary agricultural workers with H-2A work visas wait in line to cross the San Ysidro Port of Entry on their way to seasonal jobs in the United States on March 22

Russian asylum seekers Nastya (left) and Artem (right) gather with their son Samuil outside the San Ysidro Port of Entry after not being permitted to cross into the United States to seek asylum on March 22

Enrique Lucero, director of the Direction of Attention to Migrants of the Municipality of Tijuana, told DailyMail.com that the Biden administration’s plan to suspend the measure raises many unknown variables on both sides of the border.

‘We hope that the United States is very clear about how it will receive all those asylum applications once Title 42 is eliminated because it is not clear whether they will do it in person at the border or if they will do it online,’ Lucero said.

‘If they do it in person, there will be chaos at the border because everyone will want leave the shelters and arrive at the border and stand in line. So that’s going to create chaos for them and us.’

Even Beto O’Rourke says Biden needs to be better prepared for the end of Title 42

Democrat Beto O’Rourke distanced himself from President Joe Biden’s border policies on Tuesday when he said the administration needs to be better prepared before lifting pandemic-era expulsion policy Title 42.

There are concerns among state, local and federal officials that letting the rule expire on May 23 as planned will lead to a mass migrant event that would overwhelm border communities and the already-strained Department of Homeland Security.

Title 42 was enacted under Donald Trump and allows border agents to turn asylum-seekers away regardless of their status in the name of mitigating COVID-19’s spread.

O’Rourke, a failed presidential candidate who’s now running to unseat Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, was asked about the policy at a press conference.

He said there are ‘very legitimate concerns’ about lifting it, and that ‘even those who are trying to claim asylum or come to this country to work or join family, there has to be a far more orderly process for them to do that than what we’re seeing right now.’

O’Rourke took an opportunity to attack Abbott for his ‘stunt’ sending migrants from the Texas border to Washington, DC.

‘The answer is in coming up with solutions — bringing in the federal government to do their job, partnering with local communities by showing up and listening to them to hear the solutions they come up with as well,’ the candidate said.

He stepped up the criticism of the White House when admitting to ‘problems’ with the Biden administration on immigration policy, while answering a Spanish-speaking reporter’s question.

O’Rourke said in Spanish that he did not believe the president had a plan to solve the migrant crisis that’s straining local border communities — and that if he did, Biden wasn’t sharing it with him yet.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on April 1 that it was lifting Title 42 because it was ‘no longer necessary to protect the public health.’

Progressive groups and human rights advocates have been pushing Biden to lift the rule, which was started under Donald Trump, since he took office. They’ve pressed the president about his 2020 campaign promise to repeal his predecessor’s ‘inhumane’ border policies.

But several moderate Democrats including O’Rourke have broken from the White House to criticize the Biden administration’s decision.

‘It does not make sense to end this until there is a real plan and the capacity in place to handle those and address those that come over,’ O’Rourke told the Texas Tribune on Tuesday.

‘I have yet to hear a plan from the Biden administration to address the dynamic we will have on the border once Title 42 ends.’

On Capitol Hill, senators from both sides of the aisle are attempting to cobble out legislation that would pump the breaks on Biden’s decision to roll it back next month, before they believe the Department of Homeland Security would be ready to handle an expected surge in migrants at the southern border.

Democrats’ refusal to consider an amendment keeping Biden from lifting Title 42 sunk an entire $10 billion COVID pandemic aid package after weeks of bipartisan negotiations. Every Republican in the Senate voted to block the legislation.

And House Rep. Henry Cuellar became the eleventh Democrat in Congress to break from the White House and sign onto the bill fighting to keep Title 42 in place.

Cuellar, like O’Rourke, is from Texas.

‘We all believe in immigration reform, but we don’t want chaos at the border. We want law and order at the border,’ Cuellar told Fox News on Sunday.

Bills keeping Title 42 in place have the backing of six Democrats in the House and five in the Senate.

Cuellar said his party was ‘going to be hit hard by the Republicans’ if its members do not ‘stand up and do the right thing.’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted the White House moving to lift the policy as an ‘outrageous decision.’

He warned on Fox News Sunday that it ‘will produce a gusher far beyond the open border we already have, produce a gusher of additional people coming in.’

‘Totally inconsistent, by the way, with them asking us for $10 billion for vaccines and therapeutics,’ McConnell added, harkening back to the aid package.

Three GOP-led states — Arizona, Louisiana and Mississippi — are suing to block the White House from letting Title 42 expire.

Last month, before the policy had an announced expiration date, DHS warned that it was preparing for a worst-case scenario of up to 18,000 people trying to cross the border per day when it was lifted.

The federal government used the policy to expel thousands of mostly Haitian migrants from under a bridge in El Paso, Texas last year after the crowded, dirty conditions of the tent city they were being housed in sparked a humanitarian outcry.