A bus carrying 41 migrants from Brownsville, Texas, arrived in in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, the fourth bus of this type to arrive in the city in recent weeks.
There were six children among the passengers on board, aged from 1 to 15 years old.
Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s administration has sent more than 25,000 migrants to cities across the US, including New York City, Chicago and Washington, DC.
More than 80 migrants had been sent to Los Angeles, he said in a July 10 tweet.
Texas has installed giant buoys across the Rio Grande, creating a floating barrier in a desperate effort to stem migrant crossings. Construction of the 1,000-foot-long barrier began on July 7 in the town of Eagle Pass.
A bus carrying 41 migrants from Brownsville, Texas, arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening
Buoy barriers are installed and situated in the middle of the Rio Grande river on July 18, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas
Officials said the four-foot-wide orange buoys will be chained together to make the barrier, and netting will be placed underneath to prevent swimming below.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles believes the bus carrying migrants was funded by Texas state officials.
It said that around half of the migrants are from Venezuela and the others are from countries including China, Chile, Brazil Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras.
Migrants were first sent from Texas to Los Angeles on June 14 by Gov. Abbott, which Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass referred to as a ‘political stunt’.
The migrants were met by immigration coalition and other community groups and they were provided with food, clothes, hygiene kits, and consultations with legal immigration attorneys.
They will be connected with loved ones or sponsors across the West Coast of the US.
‘We will do what we must to protect the dignity and safety of these families whenever they arrive,’ the coalition’s executive director Angelica Salas said in a statement.
‘We will work together with other like-minded people and entities in Los Angeles to receive these asylum seekers with compassion and respect.’
Salas called on the Biden administration to provide protection to asylum seekers and increase funding for to nonprofits and community groups helping migrants ‘as we watch more and more buses arrive in California and other states.’
Migrants seeking asylum walk through an island while attempting to cross the Rio Grande river into the United States on July 18, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas
‘We do not mistake these busing episodes as well-intentioned,’ Salas said. ‘Texas and Florida have shown a callous disregard to the human experience, especially as it relates to asylum seekers with black and brown skin.’
‘Busing migrants anywhere in the middle of a scorching summer is not kind, it is cruel and unjustified,’ Salas added.
Gov. Abbott and the Texas Department of Public Safety have ignored the federal government’s requests for information about the floating buoy wall near Eagle Pass, according to federal officials.
Texas did not consult the federal government before using the barriers and has not responded to official requests for more information about them, even after worries were expressed that they may violate international agreements with Mexico, a State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Mexico’s top diplomat said on Friday that the nation had sent a diplomatic note to the US federal government about the floating barrier, arguing it could contravene treaties from 1944 and 1970 that govern the usage of the river.
‘The real problem is that President Biden’s open border policies have unleashed chaos on the border that’s unsustainable,’ said Gov. Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris.
‘We have a constitutional duty to do what President Biden is failing to do, and that is to respond to this unprecedented crisis.’
