(Headline USA) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed this week to keep busing illegal migrants to blue cities and states as long as President Joe Biden is in office.
Speaking at the New York Republican Party’s annual gala in Manhattan, Abbott explained the rationale behind his busing program, which has sent more than 40,000 illegals to New York City alone over the past two years.
Abbott said his team came up with the strategy after local officials near the state’s southern border expressed concern with the number of illegals that were being dropped off in their communities by federal authorities.
At first, Abbott said Texas planned to send illegals only to Washington, D.C. to draw attention to the Biden administration’s inaction.
“Neither Joe Biden nor the border czar [Vice President Kamala Harris] had actually been to the border to see the chaos and cost,” he pointed out. “And so my thought process was if they’re not going to come to the border, we’re going to take the border to them.”
Abbott decided to expand the busing program to New York, however, after receiving criticism from Mayor Eric Adams.
“Quite literally out of nowhere Eric Adams starts criticizing me for sending them to New York City,” Abbott recalled.
“We made clear, by contacting his office, and said, ‘We’re not sending them to New York,’” he continued. “We issued press releases to the press saying we’re not sending migrants to New York—that’s Joe Biden sending them to New York.”
But Adams and other New York Democrats continued to blame Texas, Abbott said, so he decided that “if I’m going to get the criticism, I want to get the credit. And thus began the busing of illegal immigrants to the sanctuary city of New York City.”
Texas has bused more than 107,000 illegal immigrants out of the Lone Star State to blue cities across the country since April 2022. Abbott made it clear his state will continue to do so until whoever occupies the White House decides to take the border crisis seriously.
“We are going to have to maintain this process until we get a new president next November who will secure the border of the United States of America,” he said.
