Busloads of migrants were unloaded near Vice President Kamala Harris’ Washington home over Christmas weekend in sub-zero temperatures. The migrants traveled from the Texas border with Mexico to the American capital, migrant rights groups said on Sunday (25).
About 110 to 130 migrants seeking refuge in the United States, including many children and their parents, were loaded onto buses by authorities in Texas, according to Tatiana Laborde, director of SAMU First Response, a humanitarian organization operating in Washington.
Laborde said aid groups had been briefed on the trip and were waiting for buses to arrive on Saturday night to hand out blankets to the migrants and direct them to a church in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Aides to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, declined to comment after being asked whether the state of Texas had coordinated the trip.
The Texan governor, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, and other Republican governors have been ferrying migrants to Democratic-controlled cities in the northern United States.
Texas has already sent thousands of migrants to Washington, New York and Chicago. Critics say it’s a ploy to influence the national debate about rising numbers of undocumented migrants crossing the border with Mexico.
Laborde said that last week, nine busloads of migrants were dropped off in Washington.
“Lately, we have seen an increase in the arrival of migrants from Ecuador and Colombia,” said Laborde. Before, many of the immigrants arriving by bus came from Venezuela. Many of them want to go to New York or New Jersey, where they already have established relatives, she said.
In September, the Texan governor had already sent two buses with migrants to the residence of the American vice president. At the time, the governor said the measure was intentional and called for stricter immigration policies. The episode happened a day after Florida sent immigrants to an island in Massachusetts.
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