Texas Gov. Greg Abbott assaults Harris for busing migrants, then brags about his personal busing program

MESA, Ariz. — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday, whereas campaigning for former President Donald Trump, criticized Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration for busing migrants to different elements of the nation. Minutes later, he bragged about doing the identical factor. 

“Once you noticed 5,000 individuals a day crossing right into a city like Eagle Move, Texas, you possibly can see that that was in your TV. You knew what was occurring in America,” Abbott instructed a crowd of about 50 individuals gathered at a marriage venue in a Phoenix suburb. “What Harris needed to do was to silence the critics, and so they might silence the critics by making this drawback go invisible.” 

“They’re doing that each day, flying individuals throughout the border or by this [asylum application program], getting them to come back to a port of entry, at which period they are going to put them on a bus after which transport them to another place,” he mentioned. 

An inner doc obtained by NBC Information in 2022 revealed a plan from the Division of Homeland Safety to move migrants awaiting immigration proceedings from U.S. cities alongside the southern border farther into the inside of the nation. Usually, migrants who’re granted asylum in the USA are transported to totally different elements of the nation by paying for it themselves or by the charity of nongovernmental organizations after being launched by Customs and Border Safety.

NBC Information has contacted Abbott’s crew for clarification on the applications he was referencing. In response to Abbott’s claims, the Harris-Walz marketing campaign shared an announcement from a border city mayor from Bisbee, Arizona, criticizing Trump for opposing a bipartisan border invoice that Senate Republicans shot down in February. 

“The border invoice would have made our nation safer, made the border safer,” mentioned Mayor Ken Budge in an announcement. “Now that it’s election time, JD Vance and Trump are right here to marketing campaign on the border — despite the fact that they’re chargeable for blocking an important invoice we’ve seen to enhance border safety,” Budge added.

The assault from Abbott comes because the Trump marketing campaign has sought to tie Harris to chaos surrounding migrants and the U.S. border. Since Harris ascended to the highest of the Democratic ticket, Trump has repeatedly referred to as Harris the “border czar” in assaults, seizing on the project Biden gave her in 2021 to work with Central American international locations to sort out the “root causes” of migration.

Minutes after attacking Harris for busing migrants to different elements of the nation, Abbott bragged about doing the identical.

Recalling the steps he took when Texas started busing migrants in 2022 below Operation Lone Star, Abbott boasted that this system “started busing them to Washington, D.C., after which dropping them off on the tackle of the residence of the vice chairman of the USA of America, Kamala Harris.” Applause and cheers reverberated all through the marketing campaign occasion. 

“Should you have been a sanctuary metropolis, you have been on the record to be bused to since you volunteered,” mentioned Abbott of his formulation of the busing program. “You mentioned, ‘We welcome you right here till you get there,’” he mentioned. “It reveals the hypocrisy of the Democrats.” 

In the course of the Republican Nationwide Conference in July, Abbott vowed that “buses will proceed to roll till we lastly safe our border.” Buses sending migrants to blue cities haven’t been despatched out on a constant foundation for months; in all of July no buses left Texas, in response to knowledge obtained by NBC Information. 

In June, a Division of Homeland Safety official told NBC News that Border Patrol brokers stopped roughly 84,000 migrants crossing the U.S. southern border, the bottom month-to-month quantity since Biden took workplace in 2021. The Biden administration attributed the low numbers to new asylum restrictions carried out earlier that month.