Social Issues

Busloads of migrants from Texas arrive at US VP’s official residence

Washington, Sep 15 (EFE).- Around 100 immigrants were dropped off Thursday near the official residence of the vice president of the United States after traveling from the border aboard buses chartered by the governor of Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for re-election in November, started bussing migrants to Washington in April to dramatize his complaint that Democratic President Joe Biden is not doing enough to help Texas manage what the governor calls a crisis on the Mexican border.

But the decision to have migrants disembark outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory appeared to mark an escalation of a provocative tactic emulated by Republican governors in Arizona and Florida.

Besides the District of Columbia, migrants have been sent to New York City and Chicago, both jurisdictions where Democrats are in power.

Fox News reported that the migrants who reached Washington on Thursday boarded the buses in Eagle Pass, Texas.

The director of Humanitarian Action, a Washington NGO that has been assisting the immigrants arriving from Texas, told Efe outside the observatory that her group had expected the passengers to get off the buses near Union Station.

“All the sudden we learned that they were here, outside the vice president’s office. Very strange,” Marisela Castillo Apitz said.

“They said that they felt deceived. Those were their words, they felt like part of a political show. There were 101 migrants in total, Venezuelans in the majority,” the activist said.

“In Texas they told them they were going to take them to a bus station. All the sudden they leave them on these streets and they realized it was a lie, that they were part of a political show,” Castillo Apitz said.

Humanitarian Action volunteers will accompany the migrants to churches and temporary shelters, she told Efe.

Officials in the office of Mayor Muriel Bowser estimate that more than 9,400 migrants have been bused to the nation’s capital from Texas and Arizona.

Thursday’s drama in Washington came a day after two chartered aircraft carrying migrants from Florida and Texas arrived unexpectedly in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also seeking a second term, claimed credit for sending the migrants to the island, which is known as a summer vacation destination for the wealthy. EFE og-ssa/dr

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