The White House charged Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday with endangering life after busloads of migrants from the Texas southwest border they were left near the house of the vice president Kamala Harris in Washington on a cold Christmas Eve.
An estimated 110 to 130 migrants seeking asylum in the United States, many of them families with children, were loaded onto buses by Texas officials, immigrant aid groups said Sunday after their arrival in the US capital.
“Governor Abbott abandoned the children on the side of the road in freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in a statement.
“Partisan games achieve nothing and only put lives in danger,” Hasan added.
Republican Abbott, a staunch critic of the immigration policies of President Joe Biden’s government, has not acknowledged the Christmas Eve move and his office has not claimed responsibility. Biden is a Democrat.
Texas has shipped by bus thousands of immigrants to WashingtonNew York and Chicago, in what some critics have called a political maneuver as there is a national debate about the high number of migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States.
Abbott has said before that his state was deliberately sending immigrants to sanctuary cities, where law enforcement is discouraged from deporting immigrants.
Hasan said the Biden administration was willing to work with Democrats and Republicans to find solutions to the migrant problem.
Amy Fischer, organizer of the Immigrant Solidarity Self-Aid Network, told npr that people were immediately transferred to buses provided by the city of Washington and taken to a church that gave them hot food and clothing.
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