Speaking at an event in Manhattan on Thursday, April 4, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the audience at the New York Republican Party’s annual gala that he would not back down from bussing thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities. Gov. Abbott’s comments came after New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticized Gov. Abbott over the bussing policy.
As background, Gov. Abbott decided to respond to the massive influx of illegal immigrants thanks to Biden’s open border by bussing as many migrants as possible to sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago. The point of the program is to show those areas just how bad the illegal immigration crisis is, put some of the burden on them and off of Texan communities, and pressure them into pushing for a border policy change.
Predictably, the sanctuary cities have responded to the bussing by claiming that the relatively small number of migrants they receive in comparison to border states like Texas is untenable and has to stop. Gov. Abbott, however, has kept the bussing up and thus kept the pressure on the sanctuary cities. During his speech, Gov. Abbott said the bussing would continue “until we get a new president.”
He also tore into Mayor Adams for the complaint Adams made about the bussing program, saying, Fox News Digital reports, “The complaining by Mayor Adams is nothing short [of] stunning.” He continued, “What he has is a tiny fraction of what Texas gets every day.”
Explaining from where the idea for the program came, Abbott said, “neither Joe Biden nor the border czar had actually been to the border to see the chaos and cost.” Continuing, he added, “My thought process was, if they’re not going to come to the border, we’re going to take the border to them.”
Continuing, he returned to putting Mayor Adams on blast, saying, “Quite literally out of nowhere, Eric Adams starts criticizing me for sending them to New York City. We made clear, by contacting his office, and said, ‘We’re not sending them to New York.’ 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.”
Gov. Abbott then pledged that the bussing to New York and other sanctuary cities would continue until there’s a president how will secure the border and deal with the situation, saying, “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 also emphasized why Texas is playing hardball on this issue, saying, “Texas is ground zero for the broken border policy imposed by Joe Biden. You know, the chaos that we’ve seen across the entire country — it seems like it’s been going on for so long that we can so easily forget that it was just four years ago that we had the lowest illegal border crossings in 45 years.”
“All-time records have been set with regard to the number of people on the terrorist watch lists who’ve been apprehended. What none of us know right now is how many terrorists on the watch list evaded detection,” Gov. Abbott added. And, tearing into Biden, he said, “The executive branch has not only the authority but the requirement, the mandate by Congress, to deny illegal entry into the United States. Biden is not doing that. He’s aiding and abetting illegal entry into the United States.”
Watch New Yorkers protest Gov. Abbott here:
Featured image credit: By World Travel & Tourism Council – Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54703342
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