While Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have come under fire for bussing illegal aliens to New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Martha's Vineyard, data show that it's actually the Biden Administration that's doing the bulk of the bussing. In just a single week in September, the Department of Homeland Security shipped 79 busloads and 29 planeloads of illegal aliens away from border regions to the interior of the United States.
Further, documents from the Government Accountability Office reveled that the illegal aliens bussed by the red state governors were headed to those regions, regardless of the states' bussing efforts. The GAO report found that New York was tied with Texas and Florida as top destinations for illegal border crossers and that the Capital region, mainly Virginia and Maryland, were also top destinations for illegal aliens.
Making matters worse, DHS isn't providing any advance warnings to the regions that illegal aliens are being relocated. Center for Immigration Studies Fellow Art Arthur noted that NYC Mayor Eric Adams began complaining about the influx of illegal aliens being sent to his city before Florida and Texas started bussing them there.
Overall, voters tend to support Abbot's and DeSantis' efforts. A Rasmussen poll from last month found that 52% of likely voters support Abbott's move to bus illegal border crossers out of the state with 36% who strongly agree. Other polls have found overwhelming support for sanctuary cities away from the southwest border sharing some of the burden of the record-level illegal border crossings that have occurred over the last 18 months.
The Biden Administration has yet to release data for the final month of FY2022 that ended in September, but through August, CBP had encountered more than 2.1 million individuals who did not have authorization to enter the U.S. at either ports of entry or other Southwest border points. Nearly 2 million of the 2.1 million were apprehended crossing the border illegally.
For more on this story, see the Washington Times.
