Thursday, March 28

It’s ‘Nice’ of Texas to Send Busloads of Illegal Immigrants to DC


White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said it is “nice” of the state of Texas to bus illegal immigrants from the border to Washington, DC, hours after the first bus out of Texas arrived blocks away from the US Capitol building.

Last week, Abbott announced that Texas would be sending willing illegal immigrants to Washington, DC, by bus and plane in response to the Biden administration’s recent announcement that it will lift Title 42, a Trump-era public-health order that has allowed US border officials to quickly expel migrant families to Mexico, next month.

“These are all migrants who have been processed by CBP and are free to travel, so it’s nice the state of Texas is helping them get to their final destination as they await the outcome of their immigration proceedings — and they’re all in immigration proceedings ,” Psaki said when asked during a press briefing about the first bus arriving on Wednesday.

The bus carried dozens of migrants from the Del Rio sector in Texas. The migrants were released into Texas’s border communities by the federal government after coming to the US from Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Fox News reported. After the bus arrived in the Capitol, the migrants checked in with officials and had wristbands they were wearing removed before being allowed to leave, the report added.

Psaki had previously called Abbott’s policy a “publicity stunt.”

The state has sent an undisclosed number of buses to the border communities impacted by an influx of migrants, but the Texas Division of Emergency Management said each bus “has the capacity and supplies necessary to carry up to 40 migrants.”

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The state has a pool of up to 900 buses for the operation, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said last week, according to CNN.

“From the [Rio Grande Valley] to Terrell County, a large majority of the communities that originally reached out for support through this operation have now said that the federal government has stopped dropping migrants in their towns since the governor’s announcement on Wednesday,” Seth Christensen, chief of media and communications for TDEM, told Fox News last week.

Meanwhile, Psaki doubled down on her criticism of another of Abbott’s policies during the press briefing on Wednesday, this time calling the governor’s order to carry out “enhanced safety inspections” of vehicles that pass through ports of entry a “political stunt.”

Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to carry out the enhanced inspections last week over concern about “Cartels that smuggle illicit contraband and people across our southern border.” The governor suggested there will be an increase in smuggling when Title 42 ends.

On Wednesday morning, Psaki released a statement that said: “Governor Abbott’s unnecessary and redundant inspections of trucks transiting ports of entry between Texas and Mexico are causing significant disruptions to the food and automobile supply chains, delaying manufacturing, impacting jobs, and raising prices for families in Texas and across the country.”

During the briefing, Psaki was asked if she is blaming Abbott for inflation.

“Well I think we’re trying to state the facts of what is another political stunt that we’re seeing happen and the impact of it,” Psaki replied. “What we’re seeing is right now, factually, there’s over $1 million in trade crossing over the US-Mexico border every minute. These actions are impacting people’s jobs and the livelihoods of hardworking families in Texas and across the country.”

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She went on to say that the “unnecessary inspections” are causing “significant delays, which are resulting in a drop in commercial traffic of up to 60 to 70 percent in some ports.”

However, the country has been contending with soaring inflation for months now. A Labor Department report released Tuesday showed the Consumer Price Index, a major inflation gauge measuring the cost of the average household basket of goods, came in at 8.5 percent over the 12-month period ending in March. The rise is the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981.

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