In Protest of Biden’s Weak Policies, Texas Dumps Migrants in Washington, DC

A bus filled with migrants who were recently apprehended along Texas’s southern border arrived Wednesday morning near Union Station. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that in protest of federal immigration policies, he would start sending migrants on a voluntary basis to the U.S. Capitol.

Abbott made the announcement after the Biden administration said it would rescind a public health order made by the Trump administration – utilizing a decades-old law known as Title 42 – expelling most migrants and barring asylum seekers due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it plans to lift the policy on May 23.

A white charter bus dropped about two dozen migrants around 9 a.m. outside a building on North Capitol Street that contains offices for Fox News, NBC News and C-SPAN, according to news reports. About an hour and a half later, Abbott tweeted: “Biden refuses to come see the mess he’s made at the border. So Texas is bringing the border to him.” A second bus was scheduled to arrive later Wednesday.

The first bus that arrived originated in Del Rio, one of several border towns that Texas Emergency Management officials have approached in recent days. TEM officials have been meeting with local leaders and nonprofit groups in those communities to gauge their interest in assisting the state with getting migrants on these buses.

W. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, was in Del Rio last week and at least three people with knowledge of his visit said he specifically visited the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, the only local nonprofit assisting migrants in the city.

The coalition has for years received migrants after they’ve been processed and given travel documents from Border Patrol agents. Its volunteers supply migrants with a backpack of toiletries, give them time to rest and shower, and help them arrange travel plans. The migrants use their own money or have family members pay for bus and plane tickets to their final destinations. The coalition’s facility, on the outskirts of Del Rio, gives migrants a safe place to wait and keeps them from having to wander into the city’s main avenue.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Del Rio said they had no role in the governor’s plan. But agents regularly drop off large groups of processed migrants daily to the coalition, which in recent weeks has seen swelling numbers of people seeking assistance. Locals reported that state-funded buses arrived late last week outside the city-owned building the coalition uses for their work. Many of those who reach the Del Rio sector are from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti.

Tiffany Burrow, the lead coordinator for the Border Humanitarian Coalition, confirmed the state officials approached them in anticipation of the large numbers of people that are expected to cross the border. The city of Del Rio provided a staging area for the buses, and state officials and Texas National Guard members assisted migrants who wanted to board the buses.

“It was completely voluntary and also from a humanitarian side, it made sense. The people on that bus were going in that direction,” said Burrow, adding more buses are on their way to Washington, D.C., but her volunteers did not facilitate the process. “This was not our thing. They came to us as they went to other locations along the border.”

The coalition last month helped more than 5,000 migrants representing 33 countries, she said.

Del Rio City Manager John Sneedy confirmed the city provided state emergency management officials with space in the same building where the Border Humanitarian Coalition operates after they were approached by Kidd during a meeting in neighboring Uvalde County. But the move wasn’t about politics, he said, it was about taking the state up on an offer of help for a situation they have been struggling to manage for months.

“I understand the state is trying to make a point,” he said. “But the city of Del Rio is not. All we are concerned about is our capacity to move migrants out of Del Rio. We didn’t want to shut down any options. Rather than thumb our nose at the state, we thought we’d let them try.”

Sneedy said no city staff are involved and the arrangement is not long term. They have been observing and assessing the process closely. City officials also obtained assurances from state officials that migrants would have the option of getting off at any stop along the way and would receive food and water. So far two buses have left Del Rio. The first had 24 people on board. The second had 14. But the process is continuing.

Sneedy said it would help Del Rio to have the state transport people to other destinations to ease the expected influx after Title 42 is lifted.

“I took the state at their word,” Sneedy said. “Del Rio is not involved in any partisan politics. Del Rio is the only community, that I’m aware of, that had 20,000 people under our international bridge. They shut down all of our international trade and it was a massive problem for us. We are thinking about when Title 42 lifts on May 23, if that goes away, what are we going to do? All we’ve been told over and over and over is it could get crazy. We could be overwhelmed. Again.”

(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Arelis R. Hernández, Maria Sacchetti, Fredrick Kunkle 

{Matzav.com}