Texas sent a busload of migrants to self-proclaimed sanctuary city Los Angeles as towns along the southern border continue to struggle with surges of migrants.
"Texas just dropped off the 1st bus of migrants in Los Angeles," Texas's Republican governor Greg Abbott tweeted on Wednesday. "Small Texas border towns remain overrun & overwhelmed because Biden refuses to secure the border."
The bus arrived Wednesday carrying 42 migrants, including 8 children. The migrants were taken to a welcoming center at a church, the Los Angeles Times reported. It's the latest move by the Republican governor to lessen the pressure of post-Title 42 migrants on border towns and move them to areas that advertise themselves as welcoming to migrants.
Abbott pointed to the Democrat-led city's "self-declared sanctuary status" as justification for the move.
"LA is a city migrants seek to go to," Abbott said, "particularly now its leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary status."
Abbott has sent migrants to several liberal jurisdictions during the Biden administration. Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) has also helped in moving migrants, most recently flying migrants from New Mexico to Sacramento. California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) threatened to charge DeSantis with kidnapping for the flights.
"These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem, because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open-border policies," DeSantis said at an event in Arizona last week, referring to the "sanctuary" status Newsom and other Democrats promise for migrants. "They have bragged that they are sanctuary jurisdictions."
The development comes as a new report alleged the Biden administration is "scared" of a coming migrant surge. President Joe Biden's challenger for the Democratic nomination, Robert Kennedy Jr., called out the crisis last week, describing the border as a "humanitarian crisis" and "unsustainable."