Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blasted the Biden administration’s immigration policies during a Wednesday speech at the Republican National Convention, and said that the state will continue busing migrants to Chicago and other sanctuary cities.
According to the latest figures released by the city of Chicago, 44,874 migrants have been transported to Chicago since Aug. 2022. Of those, nearly 40,000 have arrived by bus and nearly 5,000 have arrived on flights at O’Hare and Midway.
Abbott said that practice will continue until the border is secured during his RNC address.
“We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country. Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border,” he said.
Illinois state officials and Chicago officials have sought additional funding from the U.S. government to help deal with the influx of migrants, while New York has filed suit against Abbott’s administration, seeking compensation from Texas for the program.
Abbott dismissed the suit as “baseless,” and talked openly about his defiance of the Biden administration when Texas was ordered to stop installing razor wire at the border.
The migrant “crisis,” as it has been frequently referenced, has become one of Chicago’s most publicly polarizing scenarios over the past two years, which has often been cited by intense pushback by neighborhood residents and accompanying racial tension. But there is another side to this story.
I deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers to build hundreds of miles of razor wire barriers,” he said. “They built those barriers to stop illegal crossings. When Joe Biden ordered to cut that razor wire, I ordered the National Guard to triple the razor wire.”
The Supreme Court ruled in January that border agents could cut the razor wire down, with the administration arguing that the wire wasn’t effective in deterring border crossings. Abbott has claimed there was a “marked drop” in illegal crossings after the installation, but Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas disputed his statistics.
“I know that Governor Abbott of Texas has taken credit for a reduction in the number of encounters and I would posit that the tools that he has employed — and I’m not commenting on their lawfulness or legal shortcomings, that is obviously the subject of litigation in court — but the tools that he has employed were in effect in December, and they were in effect in January,” Mayorkas said according to CBS News. “And so to attribute the significant drop in the number of encounters to anything he has done, I would say is belied by the facts.”
Abbott says that Trump’s policies will help secure the border again, with crowds chanting ‘build the wall’ to finish up the speech.
“It is time to restore order at the border. It is time to rid our streets of crime and chaos,” he said. “It is time to secure our nation by returning Donald Trump as president of the United States of America.”