El Paso Mayor Declared Humanitarian Emergency Response to the Austin-Boston-Cartan-Feynman Center
Adams’ declaration will direct all relevant city agencies to coordinate efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis and to construct the city’s Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. The state of emergency will be in place for 30 days, the mayor said.
The mayor of El Paso was told by Adams that New York City can’t accept so many asylum seekers. He said the city has been in contact with Abbott’s office, adding that the Texas governor and his team have not been open to communication.
The city of El Paso bussed 7,754 migrants to New York and 2,091 to Chicago from August 23 to October 6 in 207 charter buses, according to Mario D’Agostino, El Paso City Deputy Manager. The migrants being offered the city-funded buses had been processed by Border Patrol and released in the community.
We will announce it after we finalize how we are going to continue to live up to our legal and moral obligation. We are letting people know what we are thinking, and how we will find creative ways to solve the humanitarian crisis, until then.
The Abbott-Adams busing campaign on the border declared a “pandemic-era” for illegal immigrants and an invitation to the Naval Observatory
Abbott and others who favor increasing immigration restrictions argue that Biden administration policies have provided an incentive for more people to cross the border illegally. Republican candidates have said they will crack down on illegal immigrants if they win the elections.
The busing campaign has led to sparring between Abbott and Adams, whose administration has accused the governor of using human beings as political pawns and whose city has been long considered a sanctuary for migrants. The mayor has asked the federal government for more resources, including housing assistance. The White House said it is in touch with Adams and committed to FEMA funding and other support.
In the fall of 2018, President Donald J. Trump was pushing aides on an idea he wanted to carry out on the border — transporting undocumented immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities.
The latest in an escalating battle between the Biden administration and state officials over the country’s immigration policy is the fact that several busloads of migrants were dropped off at the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris on Christmas Eve.
There are three busloads of migrants at the Naval Observatory, where Harris lives. The migrants were inadequately dressed for the freezing temperature as they were met by the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network.
Earlier this year, some state governors began sending buses of migrants to the nation’s capital, after the Biden administration attempted to lift a pandemic-era policy that let the U.S. deny entry to immigrants.
Abbott’s actions were “rooted in racism” and “xenophobic” according to an activist with a Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network.
The Abbott-Lambda Crisis: The U.S. Customs and Border Protection vs. the Border Community in Texas
“At the end of the day, everybody who arrived here last night was able to get free transportation, on a charter bus, that got them closer to their final destination,” she said.
In a statement in April, U.S. Customs & Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus criticized Abbott’s decision to “move migrants without adequately coordinating with the federal government and local border communities.”
“The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, particularly over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed,” Harris told NBC’s Meet the Press in a Sept. 11 interview.
“This terrible crisis for border communities in Texas is a catastrophe of your own making,” Abbott wrote in a letter to the president on Dec. 20. Thousands of migrants floods into the country each day, so the state and many communities are unable to do the job for the federal government. With perilous temperatures moving into the area, many of these migrants are at risk of freezing to death on city streets.”