Three busloads of migrants from Texas were dropped off outside the Washington DC home of US Vice-President Kamala Harris on Christmas Eve in an apparent escalation between the Biden administration and the governors of southern GOP states, such as Arizona and Florida, over White House migration policy.
The December 25 drop-off is the latest in a series of similar moves by Republican governors to bus migrants to New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, all of which are run by Democrats. Let's look into what prompts these governors to do so?
'Catastrophe' of Biden's 'Own Making'
The White House was quick to accuse Texas Governor Greg Abbott of staging a "cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt," after he dropped migrants off on Christmas Eve, adding that the governor abandoned migrants "on the side of the road in below freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities."
Spokesperson Abdullah Hasan signaled the White House’s readiness "to work with anyone – Republican or Democrat alike – on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office." The spokesperson described the bus drop-offs as "political games [which] accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger."
Migrants queue at the border wall to be received by Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Bravo river (or Rio Grande river, as it is called in the US) from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico to El Paso, Texas, US on December 21, 2022
© AFP 2023 / HERIKA MARTINEZ
The remarks followed a letter to the POTUS written by the Texas governor, who for the first time sent a migrant bus to Washington, DC, back in April. He then added New York City and Chicago as destinations. The politician has repeatedly made it clear that his state is purposefully busing migrants to sanctuary cities where law enforcement are discouraged from deporting them.
In the letter to Biden, Abbott referred to freezing temperatures in Texas cities as his reason to transport the asylum seekers, especially given that migrant housing facilities - already at capacity - have been forced to release people outside into the streets.
"Your policies will leave many people in the bitter, dangerous cold as a polar vortex moves into Texas. Texas has borne a lopsided burden caused by your open border policies," Abbott noted.
He also slammed the current border crisis as a "catastrophe," for which he claimed Biden was solely responsible.
"This terrible crisis for border communities in Texas is a catastrophe of your own making. The need to address this crisis is not the job of border states like Texas. Instead, the US Constitution dictates that it is your job, Mr. President, to defend the borders of our country, regulate our nation's immigration, and manage those who seek refuge here," the governor pointed out.
He urged Biden and his team to "stop the lie that the [US southern border] is secure and instead immediately deploy federal assets to address the dire problems you have caused." The Texas governor stressed that POTUS "must execute the duties that the US constitution mandates you perform and secure the southern border before more innocent lives are lost."
Migrants wait next to the Rio Grande as Texas National Guard soldiers prevent them from turning themselves to Border Patrol agents as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, December 20, 2022
© AFP 2023 / HERIKA MARTINEZ
Abbott warned that the situation might further exacerbate after the Biden administration abandons the Title 42 policy, something that restricts the number of migrants allowed to enter the US.
In September, after several buses dropped off about 100 migrants from Texas outside the Harris residence, Abbott bashed the vice-president for failing to travel to the southern border.
"Our supposed Border Czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, has yet to even visit the border to see firsthand the impact of the open border policies she has helped implement, even going so far as to claim the border is 'secure,'" the Abbott said at the time.
He vowed that Texas "will continue sending migrants to sanctuary cities like Washington, D.C., until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border."
White House 'AWOL on the Border'
The same tone was struck by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who made it clear in October that he would continue busing migrants from his state to Washington, DC, until he leaves office on January 2.
Ducey argued that "the Biden administration is AWOL [absent without official leave] on the border, and they're anti-wall," an apparent nod to former US President Donald Trump’s drive to build a border wall to contain migration flows.
“This is a dereliction of duty, and I will continue to do everything we can, including building our own wall and physical barrier. If Joe Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris won't come to the border, I'm going to bring the border to them," the Arizona governor emphasized.
US Migration Crisis Persists
Apart from Ducey, other Republicans have lashed out at both Harris and Biden for their unwillingness to visit the southern border amid the migration crisis in the US, which shows no sign of abating.
Earlier in December, GOP members lined up to criticize Biden, saying that his recent comments that there were "more important things going on" than the Arizona border showed that he did not care about the migration gridlock. The 46th president flew to the Apache State at the time to celebrate a $40 billion investment in computer chip manufacturing.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted that President Biden "just confirmed what I have been saying for the last 2 years. He doesn’t care about the chaos, crime, drugs, murder, or sex trafficking taking place at the southern border."
Republican Kari Lake, for her part, noted that "Joe Biden visits Arizona and accidentally confirms what we all knew: he does not care one bit about the border crisis."
GOP member Ronny Jackson wondered what is "more important than the collapsing national security of the United States," adding that Biden "needs to be fired" because "he's abandoned the US."
Remarkably, each year of Biden's presidency brought new records for border encounters, which hit 1.7 million in 2021 and in 2022 reached more than 2.3 million.
Migrants seeking asylum in the United States ask to let them turn themselves in with Border Patrol agents in the El Paso, Texas, US. border with Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on December 20, 2022
© AFP 2023 / HERIKA MARTINEZ
From the outset of his presidency, Biden was adamant about undoing many of his predecessor Donald Trump's immigration policies, purportedly to offer increased protection and care for asylum seekers and migrants. The dismal result of such an approach, though, has turned the US-Mexico border into a festering crisis that POTUS himself is unwilling to admit.
GOP members have restricted the Biden administration’s "open border policies" along with the scrapping of a number of the restrictive measures against illegal migrants that were in place before. Despite dogged insistence that he would undo "everything former President Donald Trump had done" regarding immigration, Biden has been forced to reinstate the 45th president's Remain in Mexico program, also upholding the Title 42 policy.
In March, Biden told migrants not to come to US, adding that there had been a surge in immigration "in the last two years", but that that the current rise "could be" worse. Trump argued at the time that Biden had "eroded" the system Trump had put in place, and that his policies "were working better than they have ever seen on the southern border."
Latest Developments
On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection reported that 233,740 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in November.
The figure is the highest ever recorded for that month and up from 178,845 for the same period last year, which is a more than 30% increase.
The data release was first reported by the US media and the timing led to speculation the Biden administration was trying to keep the new numbers "under wraps".
After the new statistics were tweeted by reporter Bill Melugin, it was retweeted by Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk who used two exclamation points in his post.
"In a blatant Friday evening news dump going into Christmas weekend, the federal government has released the November border numbers," Melugin tweet read.