Dems’ fury just proves govs’ point
REPUBLICAN border-state governors are sending busloads of illegal entrants — released in their states by the Department of Homeland Security — to DC and New York City, prompting recriminations and pleas for federal cash from the Democratic mayors of those erstwhile immigrant-friendly cities.
Those mayors, seemingly unwittingly, are making the governors’ point — that the administration has created a disaster at the US-Mexico line, requiring an immediate policy shift to protect lives and state and local finances.
It started in April. Fed up with federal releases of large numbers of migrants into overwhelmed small towns in his state (including Uvalde), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began offering migrants free bus trips to DC to shift some of the burden to Washington.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) followed suit in May, and more than 7,300 migrants have since arrived in DC from the two states, creating what even Vanity Fair has termed “A Migrant Crisis in Washington.”
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), who reaffirmed her town’s status as an immigrant “sanctuary city” after Donald Trump’s 2016 election, now derides Abbott’s and Ducey’s efforts as “cruel political gamesmanship” creating a “humanitarian crisis” in her city that “must be dealt with at the federal level” in a letter to the Department of Defense seeking National Guard support (since rejected).
Bowser was complaining about what, at the time, totaled 4,000 migrants over a three-month period into her city of more than 707,000. In March, by comparison, the DHS was dropping off up to 150 migrants per day in Uvalde, population 15,312, or roughly one migrant for every 102 residents daily.
Mayor Adams (D) also weighed in, blaming Texas and Arizona in July for busing 2,800 migrants into New York City (population 8.467 million) over a six-week period, straining the city’s homeless shelters. Adams also demanded federal cash to help his government muddle through.
Both governors denied Adams’ charge, but Abbott apparently viewed
it an invitation, as he has just started sending buses to Manhattan, too.
Adams’ office and The New York Times described those migrants in New York as “asylum seekers,” but that’s just mostly untrue. DHS statistics show that between July 2021 and July 2022, the department had cleared fewer than 40,000 “arriving aliens” to apply for asylum in the United States.
During that same period, however, CBP encountered 2.361 million arrivals at the southwest border, expelled 1.142 million under CDC’s pandemic-related Title 42 orders (that Biden nonetheless opposes) and released around 853,000 into the United States — meaning only about 5% of the migrants Adams is complaining about are really “asylum seekers.”
I’m sympathetic to DC and New York City, but I’ve talked to officials in those much poorer border towns about their struggles to deal with the costs. Perhaps now that Democrats are complaining, the administration will finally pay attention.
Andrew Arthur, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service associate general counsel, congressional staffer and staff director and immigration judge, is the Center for Immigration Studies’ resident fellow in law and policy.