Abbott vows to keep busing migrants but there aren’t enough

AUSTIN – NBC reports that Republican National Convention delegates erupted in applause last month when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doubled down on his commitment to send buses full of migrants to blue cities. “We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country,” Abbott told the cheering crowd in Milwaukee. “Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.” But the buses have not been rolling on a consistent basis for months because of a steep drop in the number of migrants apprehended at the southern border, according to officials and migrant shelter operators in Texas and in a half-dozen big cities across the U.S. Roughly 117,000 migrants were stopped in May, down from a record 300,000 in December. In June, the number dropped even further — to about 84,000, the lowest monthly total since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.

“They now come much less frequently,” said Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of New York, “because they don’t have enough people to cross the border to fill up a bus.” White House officials and immigration advocates attribute the slowdown to an enhanced crackdown on U.S.-bound migrants by Mexican authorities and Biden’s executive action in June restricting who can claim asylum at the southern border. A spokesman for Abbott acknowledged that there were now fewer migrants to bus out of state, but said that it was the governor’s actions in Texas that fueled the drop in migrants crossing the border. “Texas has decreased illegal crossings into the state by 85% thanks to our historic border mission,” the spokesman, Andrew Maheris, said. “Fewer illegal crossings into Texas means there are fewer buses departing for sanctuary cities.”