Philadelphia welcomed the arrival of a bus with a group of 28 migrants sent from Del Rio, Texas, this week.
While Governor Abbott has sent thousands of migrants to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, the latest event is the first time any have been bused to Philadelphia.
Leading up to the bus’s arrival, a spokesperson for Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said that Texas officials did not disclose the “exact location of where the bus [would] disembark.” Nor did Texas share “any specific information about those on board” or “if other buses are planned.”
Mayor Kenney called Governor Abbott’s actions “disgusting” and a “purposefully cruel policy using immigrant families as political pawns.”
Despite the bus arriving in Philadelphia, only three passengers reportedly plan to stay in the city, with many intending to continue to places like New York and Massachusetts.
Philadelphia was chosen because Mayor Kenney’s public proclamations celebrating sanctuary cities make it “an ideal addition to Texas’ list of drop-off locations,” according to Governor Abbott.
Government officials in Philadelphia had been preparing for the possibility that migrants could be dropped off on their city hall doorsteps, as reported by The Dallas Express.
The preparations followed after numerous instances of bussing to other self-described sanctuary cities. Earlier in the week, for example, the 300th bus filled with migrants left Texas for Chicago.
Gov. Abbott suggested that Texas has been at the forefront of a “crisis that has overrun and overwhelmed our border towns and communities across our state, whose requests for help have gone ignored and unanswered by the Biden Administration.”
In total, for the 12 months ending September 30, 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) made over 2.76 million stops at the border.
This represents an over 60% jump from the 1.72 million stops the year prior, previously the annual record.
At any given time, roughly one in five individuals attempting to illegally enter the United States have previously tried crossing at least once in the past 12 months.
Frustration has been mounting for years as the states along the southern border feel a lack of empathy from the rest of the country, especially from the federal government.
“If those mayors from New York and Washington, D.C. really want to get to the root cause of this whole situation, they need to voice their concerns to the federal government, which has completely neglected to secure the border… Here at the southern border, we’ve been seeing 7,000 to 8,000 immigrants coming across every single day, and that’s overwhelming the limited resources of these smaller border communities such as Eagle Pass and Del Rio,” stressed Lt. Chris Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Abbott’s tweeted that “Texas continues taking unprecedented action to address Biden’s historic border crisis. When the next Congress is sworn in, we must remind our representatives that securing the border is the federal government’s responsibility.”
