The ninth and 10th buses carrying migrants from the Texas-Mexico border to the nation’s capital pulled into town late Thursday, hours after Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to continue the operation until President Joe Biden takes action.
Two white charter buses dropped off migrants in a park between the Capitol and Union Station transportation hub. Migrants onboard walked a short way to the station, where many will board trains and long-distance buses to destinations where they have family or friends.
“Not once has President Biden been to the border to see exactly what’s going on. If he will not come to the border, I’m going to take the border to President Biden,” Abbott said during a roundtable with law enforcement in San Antonio earlier Thursday. “He will see by these daily flows of buses of what it’s going to be like of what Texans are dealing with, and the members of Congress are going to have to deal with it directly.”
“We will carry as many people as we can, and this is going to be an ongoing process,” Abbott continued.
Thursday marked the first day that more than one bus has arrived in Washington. The first charter bus arrived April 13, exactly a week after the governor announced the operation. Although each bus can carry up to 40 passengers, all have been far below capacity, carrying between nine and 28 people per bus.
Abbott said he did not know how many migrants had been dropped off in Washington in total, defending the operation as taking out the middleman.
“Local officials on the border — they were having the Biden administration just drop off dozens, if not hundreds, of migrants into their communities that they had no way of dealing with whatsoever,” Abbott said. “We are aiding those local communities by busing them out of there. And as opposed to busing them to a location somewhere in the state of Texas, we want to take them all the way to Washington, D.C.”
The Texas Division of Emergency Management is working with towns and cities along the border to send buses to those that request them. Similar to how local officials can request state assistance during a hurricane or flood, an assistance request must be submitted.
The buses pick up migrants when they are released by the Border Patrol. Migrants who have come across the border illegally are taken into federal custody by Border Patrol and then processed. Many migrants who are released into the United States are on humanitarian parole, while others are given documents mandating that they appear in immigration court. All migrants are either tracked through ankle monitors or cellphone apps. Migrants must sign waivers to board the buses. They are not in federal, state, or local custody at any time during the transport.
Over the past year, fewer than half of the people who illegally crossed the southern border have been released into the U.S., but with encounters topping 150,000 every month, the releases have placed a significant strain on small and large border communities that do not have the shelter space, food, transportation, or other means to help people get to other parts of the country where they have family or friends.
The U.S. is limited in its ability to repatriate migrants to countries beyond Central America, forcing the government to detain or release them at the border. Migrants are then placed in removal proceedings that likely will not be resolved in court for several years.
