Texas Gov. Greg Abbott followed through on his cruel promise to dump asylum seekers and migrants in the capital with the first busload conveniently arriving outside Fox News’ office on Wednesday morning.
Abbott vowed last week to bus them to the Capitol steps in response to the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42, a pandemic-era emergency order implemented by Donald Trump that allowed migrants to be sent back to Mexico at the border, even if they were seeking asylum.
“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington D.C.,” he said.
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“We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”
Around 30 people got off the bus when it pulled up at about 9 a.m. in front of the Hall of the States building, which houses Fox News, MSNBC and C-SPAN, a few blocks away from the Capitol. Fox News reported that officials cut off their wristbands and told them they were free to go.
Eleven migrants who spoke to The Daily Beast at Union Station said they wouldn’t be staying in the D.C. area. Instead, the group was planning to split up as Catholic Charities help them travel to New York City and Miami.
Alexande Alberto, Alejandro Rivero, and Ledinyek Rico—all from Venezuela—said they were dropped off in D.C. without any resources. “Gentlemen of the church are good people,” Rivero told The Beast. “We are without resources, and we want to achieve.”
Father John Enzler of Catholic Charities told The Daily Beast that another two buses are expected to arrive from Texas—one later Wednesday and one on Thursday morning.
“Its not well organized,” he said. Enzler added that his organization’s facilities—totaling 34 sites in D.C.—are mostly full but will look to “transition” migrants.
“Everybody [will] go somewhere else,” Ivan Calderon, an immigrant from Colombia, told The Daily Beast in comments translated by a Univision reporter. “It was crowded,” he added when asked about the conditions on the bus. The voyage took “approximately 4 or 5 days,” Calderon noted.
Those that spoke with The Daily Beast said they had come from Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Multiple advocacy groups had decried Abbott’s stunt as callous, pointless and possibly illegal as states can’t enforce federal immigration law.
“There is no one to help them,” a volunteer with the Catholic charity lamented to The Daily Beast, adding that the bus was sent by the Texas governor just to dump the migrants off at the Hall of the States building with no assistance.
