Following his announcement that he would be busing in illegal immigrants, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has come under fire from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for being “racist.”
Lightfoot has constantly boasted that Chicago is a “sanctuary city,” and on Wednesday, August 30, they welcomed 60 individuals.
Since April, Texas has bused almost 7,000 migrants to Washington, DC, and New York, investing roughly $13 million in the project.
The charter company Wynne Transportation, which transports migrants to the different destinations, has received $12,707,720.92 from the state.
As he announced that the first bus was being sent to Chicago, Governor Abbott launched another jab at Vice President Biden.
Further criticising Lightfoot, he said: “President Biden’s inactivity at our southern border continues to endanger the lives of Texans and Americans and is overloading our towns.”
“Chicago will join other sanctuary cities…as an extra drop off location…to continue to bring much-needed assistance to our little, overwhelmed border communities.”
“Mayor Lightfoot likes to emphasise the duty of her city to welcome everybody regardless of legal status, and I look forward to seeing this duty in action as these migrants get assistance from a sanctuary city with the ability to serve them,” I said.
Lightfoot retaliated against Abbott by claiming that he instituted the “racist practices” and that she had been attempting to “welcome” the immigrants.
She also criticised the prior administration of President Trump, saying that it “encouraged” “racism, prejudice, and human brutality.”
She stated in a statement that since Chicago is a welcoming city, several departments and organisations worked together to make sure we welcomed them with respect and dignity.
The city is doing all possible to provide housing, food, and most importantly, protection, for these immigrants and their families.
This is nothing new; Chicago welcomes hundreds of refugees each year and offers critical support.
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, regrettably has any sense of shame or compassion.
However, since he instituted these discriminatory expulsion measures, we have been working with our community partners to get the city ready to accept these people.
Last night, the buses arrived at 7:30 p.m., with many of the passengers being pregnant women and little children.
As they waited to board a different bus that would transport them and their families to a shelter in Chicago, children grinned and waved.
Many of the passengers identified themselves as being from Venezuela; one family told ABC that they were searching for their loved ones and a better life.
We recently left Venezuela and travelled through the forest in Panama to get to Colombia, according to William Mijares.
We were not treated like people, she said. We don’t know why, but they treated us like the worst type of people in the world, and that’s how they see us.
“We just arrived in Texas, and when they loaded us into the bus, they assured us that someone would be waiting for us, but that was untrue.
“I cannot say it was a pleasant journey, but it was better than what we experienced when travelling through South America,” the traveller said.
It took two months to get here, a different lady said. My whole family remains there. There is no food under the regime. ‘You can’t make ends meet with a $2 monthly paycheck.
A three-person family travelled across the US from Venezuela in two months, mostly on foot.
The Chicago Sun Times quoted Elier as saying, “We wanted to go to New York because we heard more people spoke Spanish there.” Elier was travelling with his wife Ana and their 3-year-old daughter Cataleya.
But because we were unable to get there, they offered us this choice. Now all I have to do is strive to provide her a better future.
Three law enforcement officers were shot in a single week in June, raising fears about an increase in violence in the city where the new immigrants are now located.
Despite a 16 percent decline in gunshot events since last year, Chicago’s overall crime has increased by 35 percent.
In the same time this year, 952 gunshots were recorded, compared to 1,135 in 2021.
Robberies, criminal sexual assault, and theft-related offences have all seen an increase in reports, while homicides have seen a decline.
The necessity for the buses, according to Republican presidential candidate Greg Abbott, who is running for re-election in November, is due to Democratic President Joe Biden’s failure to secure the border with Mexico.
Between October 1, 2021, and July 31, 2022, the U.S. Border Patrol detained 1.8 million migrants along the southwest border, setting a new record.
Although it is unclear what alternative choices have been presented to the migrants, Abbott’s administration has said that migrants are only taken outside of the state with their written consent.
The Democratic mayors of Washington and New York City have pleaded for federal aid ever since Abbott launched the busing initiative.
Additionally, it sparked a verbal exchange between Abbott and Mayor of New York City Eric Adams.
Abbott has been charged with installing security on the buses to prevent immigrants from alighting before arriving at their destination, according to Manuel Castro, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs in the Big Apple.
New immigrants to the nation’s capital have had difficulty locating long-term housing and medical treatment.
The White House has claimed that Abbott’s initiatives and a related campaign by another Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, are causing instability and utilising migrants as players in political games.
But El Paso, Texas, which is governed by Democrats, also dispatched a busload of migrants to New York City last week, and it apparently intended to send another busload to Chicago.
Immigration watchdogs estimate that since President Joe Biden took office last year, approximately 4.9 million undocumented immigrants have entered the country; they have designated New York and Los Angeles as the nation’s most dangerous sanctuary cities.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 3.4 million migrants have crossed the southwest border since Biden’s inauguration, and an additional 900,000 have entered the country covertly.
The startling figure fuels growing concerns that the Biden administration is dozing off as record numbers of people—along with those suspected of trafficking in drugs and carrying out terrorist attacks—cross the southern border, leading the majority of Americans to believe that this amount to a “invasion.”
According to Dan Stein, president of FAIR, the almost 5 million people who have entered the country illegally since January 20, 2021, are equivalent to the “entire population of Ireland.” He said that the government had “sabotaged our country’s immigration laws.”