New busloads of migrants arrive in NYC from Texas
Two fresh busloads of migrants rolled into New York City after being shipped in by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday — as the number of asylum seekers arriving in the Big Apple continued to surge.
The first bus — carrying 41 migrants, including 15 kids — arrived at Manhattan’s Port Authority terminal at about 7 a.m. from the US border town of Laredo, Texas, migrant advocates told The Post.
A second busload of asylum seekers, which carried 27 adults and 23 children from the same Texas town, pulled into the station just after 1:30 p.m.
The buses were sent to the Big Apple by Abbott, his office confirmed Wednesday – just days after Mayor Eric Adams said the Lone Star state would be ramping up how many migrants it would ship to the sanctuary city.
“What Gov. Abbott is doing is clearly shameful,” Manuel Castro, Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said after greeting the migrants as they hopped off the buses.
“He is using children, migrants to make political points.”
The latest influx came as Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul both continued to insist Wednesday they were powerless to stop the flow of migrants into the city, which has so far topped 59,400 over the last year.
Roughly 1,100 asylum seekers arrived in the city over a four-day stretch last week between Wednesday, April 26 and Sunday, April 30, the latest City Hall figures show.
“It calls for a federal solution. Absolutely calls for a federal solution. And the mayor is doing the best he can,” said Hochul when asked about the new busloads of migrants after an unrelated press conference with the mayor.
“It’s really been a real challenge.”
Adams has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of turning its back on the city and last week called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop other states from shipping migrants here.
Hizzoner also made the explosive allegation this week that Abbott, who is white, was trying to “hurt black-run cities” by shipping migrants to NYC, a charge Castro reiterated Wednesday.
“He’s also targeting cities that are led by African-American mayors, and that’s just disgraceful, but what’s disappointing is that the federal government is allowing this to happen,” Castro said.
His claim comes even though El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, who is a Democrat and of Mexican descent, has shipped more than twice the number of migrants to the Big Apple and Chicago. Also, Abbot has sent migrants to places such as Philadelphia, whoes mayor, Jim Kenney, is white.
Still, Adams insisted Wednesday that the city had asked Abbott “over and over again” to stop bussing migrants to the Big Apple.
Meanwhile, Castro warned that migrant numbers would only swell if Abbott continued to send busloads to the city.
“We have been welcoming anywhere between 2-to-300 people a day for some time now and with these busses restarting, we can expect over 1,000 people a day, which is incredibly difficult for us because we have been doing this for now close to a year,” he said.
Castro doubled down on Hizzoner’s prior criticism of the Biden administration, arguing the feds needed to expedite the work permits being issued to asylum seekers.
“We are disappointed that the federal government is not doing more to support families at the border, families who need quite a lot of assistance, especially emergency shelter as they await their asylum claims to be processed and for them to obtain work permits,” he said.
“Many of the families that we talked to tell us the same thing over and over — they are here to work, they do not want to depend on the government. But without the work permits, it’s really difficult for them because then they have to depend entirely on the city for shelter and services.”
Currently, there are 36,800 migrants who are currently being put up in the 120 city-run shelters and humanitarian relief centers across the five boroughs.
Additional reporting by MaryAnn Martinez.
