GOP gets Democratic border crisis it wanted
Mayors, governors on left call for federal help as migrants stress northern ‘sanctuary’ cities
When Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending migrants and asylum-seekers to New York, Washington and Chicago, he vowed to bring the border to the Democratic cities he said were dismissing its costs.
A year later, the migrant waves he helped set in motion have put northern “sanctuary” cities increasingly on edge, their budgets stretched, their communities strained. And a border crisis that has animated Republican politics for years is now dividing the Democratic Party. Humanitarian impulses are crashing into resource constraints, and once-loyal Democratic allies have reluctantly joined Republicans to train their fire on President Joe Biden.
Eric Adams, the mayor of the nation’s largest city, declared this week that without a federal bailout and clampdown at the border, swelling migration “will destroy New York City.” The nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, has promised to sue Abbott. The Democratic mayor of the third-largest city, Chicago, began pleading last month for the White House to step in.
“Let me state this clearly: The city of Chicago cannot go on welcoming new arrivals safely and capably without significant support and immigration policy changes,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.
Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, a liberal Democrat, has declared a state of emergency, activated the National Guard and started petitioning the White House for help.
The migrants on state-funded buses from Texas are a fraction of the total number arriving in northern cities. Texas brags its “Operation Lone Star” has sent more than 13,100 migrants to New York City since August 2022, but the strain there stems from the total, over 110,000. Some of those migrants have family in New York, while others are attracted to the city’s history of welcoming immigrants.
Still, the rising clamor is creating a rare convergence between the two parties, which for years have fought in seemingly parallel political universes. Democrats focused on issues like abortion, the preservation of democracy and expansion of health care, while Republicans warned of a migrant “invasion” and railed against “woke” liberal ideology and expanding LGBTQ+ rights. Endless Republican news conferences at the border and threats to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, were dismissed as political bluster.
Now, suddenly, some Democrats are sounding remarkably like Republicans.
“Upstate New Yorkers shouldn’t be forced to bear responsibility for decades of failed immigration policy, dysfunction and stupidity out of Washington, Albany and places like New York City,” said Josh Riley, the Democratic candidate seeking to unseat Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Hudson Valley Republican. Riley added it was time for Biden to “to step up and help out.”
For Republicans, the response to Abbott’s gambit has gone beyond what they could have hoped for. Conservative Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, praised the bus caravans as “bold” and “thinking outside the box.”
Even more moderate Republican voices have praised the move.
“The reality is, Abbott was shining a light on existing issues that nobody was talking about,” said Will Hurd, a moderate
Republican and former House member from a Texas border district now running for president as a fierce critic of Donald Trump. “Blue governors and mayors are having to deal with what Republican governors have had to deal with for three years now.”
Democrats seem paralyzed by a surge of urban migration that has defied easy answers — and increasingly threatens their political aspirations, from crucial tossup congressional races in the suburbs of New York City to the race for the White House.
Democrats in the cities continue to castigate their Republican opponents for using migrants as political weapons, with little regard for their health or safety. Last month, a 3-year-old child traveling to Chicago on a Texas-funded bus became ill, was put on an ambulance and later died at a hospital.
But many Democrats realize complaints go only so far as they enter an election year, when immigration, border security and appeals to nativism from Trump and his imitators will roil the electorate far from the Mexican border.
“The potency of the issue has not abated, and Democrats who think that it has are fooling themselves,” said Howard Wolfson, a top Democratic strategist who steers hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending as Michael Bloomberg’s adviser.