By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-30 15:36:29 | Updated at 2024-09-30 17:32:01
2 hours ago
Texas Governor Greg Abbott admitted he started bussing migrants to New York City to get revenge on Mayor Eric Adams for criticizing him.
The Lone Star State was inundated with thousands of migrants crossing its borders each day in 2022 which led the three-term Republican governor to transport them to sanctuary cities.
At first the plan was to send the migrants to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to show the Biden administration the nature of the crisis at the border, according to Abbott.
Then he claimed New York City Mayor started to blamed him for the city's migrant crisis and the governor decided if he was going to be accused of bussing migrants there, he might was well do it.
'Out of nowhere Mayor Adams started criticizing me for busing them to New York, which I was not doing. But he kept criticizing me,' Abbott told The New York Post.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he started bussing migrants to New York City to get revenge on Eric Adams
In March, Abbott's office revealed over 39,600 migrants have been bussed from the Lone Star State to New York City since August 2022
'I thought, "You know what? New York is a sanctuary city, if I'm going to get the criticism, I'm going to get the credit." So we started busing them to New York.'
Since October 2021, over 10 million migrants have crossed into the US, according to federal statistics - straining the federal agencies that handle migrants and bringing border communities, like El Paso, Texas, to its knees.
Texas' sixth largest city operated under a state of emergency for more than a year due as 2,400 migrants a day were crossing there at the peak.
Abbott blamed President Joe Biden's border policies for the crisis and wanted to send a message to the White House.
'If they refused to come to the border and see the disaster they caused, I was going to take the border to them. We were busing initially only to the sanctuary city of Washington, D.C., so that the leaders there would see firsthand the chaos they caused,' Abbott said.
Adams slammed Abbott for his actions, which then prompted the Republican governor to send migrants to the Big Apple.
'Adams wanted somebody to criticize, and he probably knew it was the Biden administration, but he wanted to use me as a punching bag,' Abbott said.
Abbott claimed New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed him for the city's migrant crisis before he was sending busses there
Two months after the first busses from Texas arrived in NYC the mayor declared an emergency
'And I thought, you know what? If he thinks that we’re sending them there, we’ll live up to what his expectations are and we’ll start busing there.'
The first bus load from Texas arrived in August 2022 and two months later Adams had declared an emergency, asking for help to handle the 61,000 migrants that were in the city's shelters in October 2022.
In March, Abbott's office revealed over 39,600 migrants have been bussed from the Lone Star State to New York City since August 2022.
The two have continued to spat over the migrant crisis and in April the mayor offered Abbott a complimentary stay at a migrant shelter during his trip to the Big Apple to headline the New York Republican Party's annual gala.
