The Mayor of McAllen, Texas is bewildered. Javier Villalobos is on the front lines of Joe Biden’s border crisis and, along with other small and medium-sized Texas cities, have been overwhelmed with illegal aliens looking to get into the United States.
Villalobos has been following the story of a few thousand illegals being bused north to New York City and Washington, D.C., and the reaction from Democratic politicians in those cities. He can’t understand what their complaints are all about.
“You see New York, you see Washington kind of drowning with a few buses,” Villalobos told Fox News. “We used to get over a thousand-something people a day.”
To date, New York City has seen just a few hundred illegal aliens dropped off at the Port Authority. Washington, D.C., has been the primary target of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” which, among other things, buses illegal aliens released by the Feds at the border. Since early May, approximately 6,500 border crossers volunteered to travel north and have been bused to D.C. They were dropped off at Union Station.
The problem is not that New York and D.C. are “overwhelmed” with illegals. The problem is that they want it to appear they are overwhelmed in order to get the federal government to block Texas from sending any more buses their way. In reality, the few hundred illegals who have shown up in New York and the few thousand that have arrived in D.C. should not be a problem for a major city. Not when McAllen and other smaller towns had it much worse.
“The city of McAllen was able to deal with thousands of immigrants a day,” Villalobos said. “I think they can handle a few hundred.”
McAllen dealt with record immigration in 2021, managing over 130,000 new arrivals between February and November, according to city data. Villalobos said that McAllen sees about 100 crossings a day.
Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management in April to begin transporting illegal immigrants released from federal custody in Texas to Washington, D.C., and other locations outside the Lone Star State. Villalobos said he initially wondered if Abbott had authority to bus migrants out of state.
“When I found out that it was voluntary, well, that’s great, because that’s the ultimate destination that these individuals want to go anyway,” McAllen said. “So if it’s being provided, as the state of Texas explains, well, they’re a little bit lucky in a sense, and it’s fortunate for us that we can transport them out even sooner.”
When New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser bitterly complained about the buses of illegals, Abbott told them to take it up with Biden.
New York City is an ideal destination for migrants since they “can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city,” Abbott said in a statement. “I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief.”
The lone star state has transported over 6,800 migrants to Washington, D.C, since April and over 360 migrants to New York City since last week, according to the governor’s office. In comparison, the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen saw over 1,500 new migrant arrivals for several days in early late July and early August 2021, according to a city report.
Cities like McAllen, Texas, and Yuma, Ariz., don’t have the facilities or the resources to care for the masses of border crossers. But Bowser and Adams want to posture about how welcoming their cities are to illegals.
Now they’re experiencing the real-world consequences of their policies. Instead of whining about how “inhumane” Abbott’s bus program is, they might want to bring the problem to Joe Biden’s office instead.
Source: PJ Media
