The Biden administration is moving forward on a plan to begin transporting migrants apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border to U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston in an effort to provide aid to overwhelmed border towns that face rising mass releases, according to a report published Wednesday.
Starting in a few weeks, federal homeland security and emergency management agencies will use taxpayer funds to move migrants from federal facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border to shelters in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Angeles; and Houston, NBC News reported.
The planned long-distance transports come as more people have been encountered attempting to enter the United States from Mexico without permission than at any other time in history. As encounters have soared under the Biden administration, so have the number of migrants released into the U.S. who have been told to show up for court proceedings about their unlawful entry that will take place in three to five years due to the 1.8 million-long wait list before the immigration courts.
Local and state officials have complained since March 2021 that local nonprofit and religious organizations could not keep up with helping, housing, and feeding the thousands of people released daily. The Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement may release people from custody rather than return them to Mexico or another custody and does so on a case-by-case basis.
From those cities, migrants can travel anywhere in the country, likely to places where they already have friends or family.
THOUSANDS OF UNVACCINATED BORDER PATROL AGENTS FEAR FOR THEIR FUTURE
The decision to bus or fly migrants to the largest cities in Texas comes after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott began busing migrants to Washington, D.C., in a show of force meant to upset the Biden administration, which he said was not doing enough to secure the border.
Doug Nicholls, the mayor of Yuma, Arizona, told the Washington Examiner in May that he asked the Biden administration in closed-door meetings last week to halt all Border Patrol releases of migrants in cities and towns that have populations of less than 1 million. The move would halt nearly all releases along much of the border and instead force the federal government to transport those it wants to discharge from custody to larger cities such as Houston and San Antonio in Texas and Phoenix in Arizona.
Yuma’s main nonprofit organization has already begun busing migrants to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix because regional airports cannot accommodate as many migrants who are in need of flights in addition to the general public.
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The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
