The governor of Texas admitted that his state intentionally sent two buses with immigrants to the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in the US capital. The arrival of the vehicles on Thursday (15) in the morning surprised the volunteers, who were not prepared to receive them there.
The stopover temporarily left dozens of immigrants (some of them carrying their belongings in garbage bags) on the sidewalks and on the lawn outside the US Naval Observatory in Washington, the vice president’s official residence.
Greg Abbott of Texas — one of three Republican governors who admit to the practice of putting immigrants on buses or on flights to the north of the country to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies — said his state sent the buses directly to the residence. of Harris.
“Vice President Harris claims our border is ‘secure’ and denies crisis,” tweeted Abbott. “We are sending immigrants into her backyard to appeal to the Biden administration to do its job and secure the border.”
Abbott began sending vehicles with immigrants to Washington in April, but they usually stopped near Union Station — the place, by the way, where the volunteers were on Thursday, waiting for two buses to arrive.
However, the train stopped at the Naval Observatory, about 6.5 km away from the station.
One of the groups that helped migrants in Washington, called SAMU First Response, said it had not been notified of the change of route, according to director general Tatiana Laborde.
“When our team found the immigrants, they were pretty lost,” Laborde told CNN . “They didn’t understand where they were because this is a very residential area.”
Families and young people were among the passengers dropped off at Harris’ home. According to the volunteers, there were about 100 immigrants. About 70% to 80% of immigrants are from Venezuela, but there are also nationals from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua and Panama, according to Governor Abbott’s office.
The immigrants were eventually taken to a local church, where they would be informed of their next destination. Some are trying to go to cities like New York and Chicago.
As of late Thursday morning, volunteers were still coordinating destinations with other agencies, and expected that “about half of the people on the buses today should be forwarded later this afternoon,” Laborde reported.
For the organization’s director, immigrants are welcome in Washington, but Texas’ “lack of collaboration” makes logistics difficult.
“Yes, we are receiving immigrants, but what happened this morning, with people being left on the sidewalk, without coordination, makes this job extremely challenging,” he said.
The leader of a civil rights organization that works with Hispanic Americans also criticized the governor of Texas for Thursday’s submission.
“People were literally dumped like human waste in front of the vice president’s house. That’s not Christian, it’s not Texan, it’s not American, and it’s something that shouldn’t be allowed,” said Domingo Garcia, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. She spoke to reporters Thursday afternoon in front of Kamala Harris’ home.
Garcia said the volunteer organization will travel to the cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio to stop buses “before they leave”, putting people in front of vehicles and “advising immigrants on their legal rights so they are not used as political pawns”. That campaign is likely to start “in the next week,” he said.
It was unclear whether Harris was at the residence when the immigrants were dropped off. The vice president had an event scheduled for the morning at the White House, approximately 4 km from her home.
emergency state
After Texas began sending immigrants to the nation’s capital, Arizona followed suit. The two states have already sent thousands of immigrants to Washington. Abbott expanded the scope of Texas to also include the cities of New York and Chicago.
In addition to them, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said this week that he sent two planes carrying immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency in the city due to convoys from Texas and Arizona, in an attempt to mobilize resources more quickly. She announced a new municipal office to meet the basic needs of immigrants arriving in the city, including meals, transportation, urgent medical care and transportation to get people to housing services.
Last week, the mayor also criticized Abbott and the governor of Arizona. Doug Ducey, for his actions, saying they were creating a “growing humanitarian crisis”.
Abbott said there’s no turning back.
“Texas will continue to send immigrants to sanctuary cities like Washington” until Biden and Harris “step up and do their work to ensure border security,” the governor said in a press release.
The “strategy of busing” (dispatching people on buses) from Texas has sent more than 10,000 immigrants to Washington, New York and Chicago in recent months.
high of venezuelans
Immigrants who are released from government custody after immigration procedures are allowed to move within the United States. The country has reported an increase in Venezuelan immigrants fleeing the country’s deteriorating situation.
Frozen US-Venezuela relations prevent the US from deporting certain people. Many Venezuelan immigrants also seek asylum when they arrive in the US.
Two medical alerts involving Thursday’s passengers were reported: a diabetic who had not cooled his insulin for at least 40 hours, and a person with a severe rash that must have been acquired while crossing the Rio Grande, which separates Texas and the Mexico.
Rebekah Riess, Sonnet Swire and Dianne Gallagher of CNN contributed to this story.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
