Florida and Texas governors fly immigrants to Kamala Harris’s and Barack Obama’s homes
Republican governors have sent about 100 more migrants to ‘sanctuary cities’ to highlight a worsening humanitarian crisis on the US southern border.
The governors of the United States’ two biggest Republican states, Florida and Texas, have sent illegal immigrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s official home in Washington and fancy seaside resort of Martha’s Vineyard, upping the ante on a controversial policy to draw attention to a humanitarian crisis on the US southern border.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott claimed responsibility for dropping off about 100 immigrants by bus, unannounced, outside Ms Harris’s official residence at the Naval Observatory on Friday, the latest instalment in a policy begun in April, which has bussed more than 10,000 unauthorised migrants to the US capital, New York and Chicago.
“We will continue sending migrants to sanctuary cities like DC until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border,” said Mr Abbott, referring a role President Joe Biden gave Ms Harris in March 2021, few analysts argue has been fulfilled.
Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday claimed responsibility for paying to fly two planes of immigrants, about 50 in total including some children, from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, a playground of America’s elite, where former president Barack Obama and former US secretary of state John Kerry have homes.
“And all those people in DC and New York, beating their chests when Trump was president saying they were so proud to be sanctuary jurisdictions, well the minute even a small fraction of what the towns on the border deal with every day is brought to their front door, they go berserk,” Mr DeSantis said at a press conference on Thursday.
“We are not a sanctuary state, and we will gladly facilitate the transport of illegal immigrants to sanctuary jurisdictions,” he added, referring to a designation some Democrat cities use to describe themselves, meant to indicate a welcoming attitude to the poor and diverse.
Texas has borne the brunt of a wave of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, more than 1.8 million of whom have crossed into the US over the southern border with Mexico in the nine months since October last year, up from 458,000 for the entirety of the 2020 financial year.
Elizabeth Warren, Democrat senator for Massachusetts, said the transportation policy was “repulsive and cruel”, a way of “exploiting vulnerable people for political stunts”.
One of the new arrivals at Martha’s Vineyard told the New York Times, in Spanish, he had received a pair of shoes and “had never seen anything like” the island town of about 20,000 people.
“I haven’t slept well in three months,” “Leonel”, 45, told the newspaper. “It’s been three months since I put on a new pair of pants. Or shoes.”
The Vice President, after delivering a speech in Washington, looked blankly at a reporter on Thursday morning who asked her for a statement on the arrivals.
Charities and local DC authorities said the immigrants, who came mainly from Venezuela to escape the policies of socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, were being looked after in a nearby church.
“They were just literally dumped like human garbage in front of the vice president’s house,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, to reporters Thursday afternoon outside Ms Harris’s residence.
“That’s un-Christian un-Texan, un-American, and something that should not be allowed”.
“The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed,” she said a week earlier in a television interview.
The escalating war of words between top Democrats and southern Republican comes ahead of midterm Congressional and gubernatorial elections in November, where Republicans hope to bring attention to the extent of the humanitarian crisis and blame it on the Biden administration’s allegedly lax border polices.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, whose city has received more than 2200 immigrants’ courtesy of Texas since early August, said his city was at “breaking point” and he expected thousands more immigrants to arrive in coming weeks.
“The city’s prior practices, which never contemplated the bussing of thousands of people into New York, must be reassessed,” he said on Wednesday.
Washington mayor Muriel Bowser, whose city has received more than 8000 immigrants since April, more than any other, has had two separate requests asking the federal government for help denied.
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