Texas border city joins in with busing migrants north

In an effort to manage the growing number of asylum-seekers from Latin America arriving at the border, county and city officials of El Paso, a large Texas border city, started to bus migrants out of the region.

The first chartered bus sent 35 Venezuelan migrants to New York last week. This week, El Paso also sent buses with migrants to New York and Chicago, reported El Paso Matters.

According to the US Border Patrol, the El Paso area has seen a sharp increase in migrants arriving in West Texas and New Mexico, with as many as 900 people per day. Government holding facilities and local hospitality site shelter capacity have been stretched thin with the arrival of so many migrants.

A New York City official said more than 200 migrants who arrived in the city on five buses last Thursday were released into the city without proper communication and coordination on the part of Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

"Texas Governor Abbott's office remains unwilling to coordinate and communicate with us on when these buses are arriving and how many people they're carrying, but we've been working with nonprofits on the ground to prepare as best we could," Shaina Coronel, director of communications with the New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, told El Paso Matters.

The bus trips have been organized and coordinated by the El Paso Office of Emergency Management. Officials said migrants are bused to destinations of their choosing.

Pamela, a migrant who identified herself by her first name only, told El Paso Matters that being in the United States safely made their journey worthwhile. She traveled from Ecuador with her husband and their two young children.

"All we want is opportunity. The opportunity to work hard and for our children to be safe," she said. She and her family were waiting to reunite with a cousin in Virginia.

Since April, Abbott has bused more than 7,000 migrants to New York and Washington, DC.

Abbott's program, which has resulted in political feuds with New York Mayor Eric Adams and District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, comes as a large El Paso migrant shelter was closed at the beginning of August, and area shelter capacity has been overrun.

Adams said on Monday that nearly 7,600 migrants have arrived in the city since May, which leaves city officials scrambling to find adequate shelters for them.

Adams said that New York City itself has over 52,000 homeless people, who rely on the city for shelter.

Bowser has repeatedly requested the deployment of the National Guard in the capital city to help handle an influx of migrants and prevent a prolonged humanitarian crisis.

Sending migrants from Texas to Washington, DC, and New York City is throwing the federal system for processing migrants "out of whack" due to the lack of coordination, US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com