Texas governor pushes migrant busing to higher level

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is stepping on the gas in his busing campaign as howls from sanctuary cities grow, and he has sent another 10,000 migrants to Democratic-led big cities in the past two weeks.

Eighteen months after the first bus arrived outside the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Abbott’s campaign has reshaped the immigration debate by delivering the pain of the Biden border surge to previously insulated communities.

He has sent more than 55,500 people to six sanctuary cities. New York has surpassed the District of Columbia as the lead destination, with more than 20,000 migrants. Chicago is second with 15,000 migrants, the District is third with 12,500, and Denver, Philadelphia and Los Angeles collectively received another 8,000 or so.

Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has ordered more work on the border wall in his state and convened the Texas Legislature for a special session to write legislation to penalize illegal immigrants and give police and National Guard troops more tools to stop the record flow of people.

The governor has dubbed his efforts Operation Lone Star, making him the chief foil to President Biden. Mr. Abbott said Biden administration policies have transformed the border from relative calm under the past administration to more chaotic than it has been in a century.

Emilio Gonzalez, who ran U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Bush administration, said Mr. Abbott has forced the rest of the country to confront that reality.

“Immigration, in general, was always a very amorphous concept. When people talked about immigration, they would talk about their cardiologist who’s from India or their daughter’s soccer coach who’s from Argentina,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Now you have border governors saying, ‘You want to see what immigration is like? We’ll show you.’

“Now those poor people are parked in front of their house, and that’s the big change. Because as long as you didn’t see it, you didn’t care,” he said.

The District was a logical first target for the busing. On April 13, 2022, a bus pulled up at Union Station, just across Massachusetts Avenue from the Capitol campus, and migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela piled out to the streets of the nation’s capital.

Thousands more would follow, most to Union Station, but some were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence at the Naval Observatory. In August 2022, New York City and Chicago were added to the list of destinations. Mr. Abbott included Philadelphia in November, Denver in May and Los Angeles in June.

Mr. Abbott picked sanctuary cities, whose policies prevent cooperation with federal immigration authorities, to make a statement.

The pace of buses ebbed and flowed, but Mr. Abbott kicked his operation into a higher gear over the past month with more than 17,000 migrants. Roughly 10,000 arrived in the past two weeks.

Texas has budgeted nearly $10 billion through 2025 for the full Operation Lone Star effort.

The sanctuary jurisdictions that Mr. Abbott has targeted called his busing offensive and inhumane, particularly after a 3-year-old died in August on a bus headed to Chicago. The girl reportedly had multiple viral infections. Whether Texas officials were aware of her condition before she was allowed onto the bus is disputed.

Mr. Abbott’s office didn’t respond to an inquiry for this report, but the governor’s aides have said all migrants sign a waiver making clear that they are boarding the buses voluntarily and know where they are headed.

The sanctuary cities initially talked a good game, saying they would show Texas how to welcome “asylum-seekers.”

As the numbers grew, however, the cities acknowledged they could not handle the load.

The cities still gripe about Texas but now also complain about Mr. Biden, which was Mr. Abbott’s goal. New York says it has welcomed some 125,000 migrants since the spring, but only 20,000 of them by way of Texas’ buses.

Still, the Democratic-led jurisdictions want Texas to stop. The Los Angeles City Council voted late this summer to explore a lawsuit against Mr. Abbott and to investigate whether Texas has committed any crimes.

The governor said Operation Lone Star has not only bused migrants but also helped apprehend more than 475,000 illegal immigrants and make 35,100 criminal arrests. Texas law enforcement said it has seized enough fentanyl to constitute more than 432 million lethal doses.

The governor’s office said that’s a service to the whole country because those drugs otherwise would have spread throughout the nation.

Human Rights Watch, however, said there is no evidence that Mr. Abbott’s Operation Lone Star has made a dent in the flow of people. The group said the increased difficulty of crossing the border has raised migrant smugglers’ prices, effectively funneling more cash to the cartels.

Bob Libal, a Texas-based consultant to Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Abbott is proposing duplicates of federal duties but without the resources and training to do them right.

“Besides being duplicative, this callous proposal is totally contrary to human rights standards that prohibit governments from deporting refugees to persecution or punishing refugees for illegal entry,” Mr. Libal said. “State police are not qualified to hear asylum claims or deport people. Their job is to protect public safety.”