What’s happening with the bussing of migrants to NYC?—08-22-21
Immigration news, in context
This is the 134th edition of BORDER/LINES, a weekly newsletter by Felipe De La Hoz and Gaby Del Valle designed to get you up to speed on the big developments in immigration policy. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and ideas at BorderLines.News@protonmail.ch.
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Gaby is sick this week, so we’re bringing you a slightly abridged version without additional sections.
The Big Picture
The news: As you may have heard, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been busing asylum seekers from the border to New York City. As he and equally bombastic New York Mayor Eric Adams duke it out in the political arena, many casual observers have been left confused about the actual numbers and situation of the migrants arriving in NYC.
What’s happening?
If you read BORDER/LINES regularly, you’ll know that Abbott is notoriously prone to border-related security theater and stunts. From the dubiously and functionally disastrous Operation Lone Star to his redundant security checks of northbound commercial traffic (which snarled trade and almost triggered a diplomatic incident) to his bizarre attempt to have Texas law enforcement personnel all-but-deport migrants themselves without their guaranteed due process, the governor has made it a signature move to pander to right-wing blogger types about his strength at the border.
Paired with the “own the libs” ethos that seems to have become a core tenet of the contemporary GOP, this has also taken the form of bussing migrants to sanctuary jurisdictions. As we’ve noted before, Abbott and his Arizona counterpart, Governor Doug Ducey, have for months been bussing migrants to Washington, D.C., with the general intent of making the laughable claim that President Joe Biden has adopted some sort of open borders policy (he hasn’t).
Last month, NYC’s Adams abruptly announced that the city government was seeking federal assistance to deal with an influx of asylum seekers from the border to the city’s shelter system. The estimated number of arrivals fluctuated wildly over several days, with the mayor claiming either almost 2,500 or over 2,800 people had arrived and providing no methodology for how the city was calculating this figure. Still, social services organizations around the city corroborated that there had indeed been increasing arrivals of migrants over a few months, often drawn by family in the area or a sense that New York City would be a safer place to end up.
Adams immediately blamed Texas and Arizona, claiming that they were bussing migrants to the city. There was no evidence that they were when he made that announcement, but he seems to have given Abbott the idea, with the latter choosing to also begin sending migrants to the city. Here, it’s important to clarify what we mean by “sending.” This is not an immigration action and has nothing to do with the migrants’ open asylum cases except for the fact that they will be calendared in the immigration court closest to their destination. Functionally, there is nothing different about these cases versus the folks who don’t get bussed. They still have ongoing court cases and future hearings, and have to prove their eligibility for asylum in the same way as any other applicant.
These folks are not in immigration custody and, crucially, the state of Texas has no authority to forcibly transport them to another state, which means that the busing is supposed to be voluntary, though there has been some reporting that Abbott has hired private security to prevent them from disembarking elsewhere. That would definitely be illegal, and Abbott’s office has denied it. There are also indications some have been tricked into taking the trek. In any case, many are happy to take the offer, as they’re headed to the Northeast anyway, and often to New York specifically.
City officials have groused that one of the reasons for this is the city’s unusual right to shelter obligation, the product of a consent decree that mandates that the local government offer physical shelter to anyone who needs it. While it’s possible that migrants may have heard about this arrangement, it’s unlikely this is their primary interest in the ride to NYC. More likely, they have family or are simply aware of New York City’s general reputation for opportunity. The city also offers a broader constellation of services including legal services and municipal ID cards, a de Blasio-era project to help mainly undocumented immigrants get some form of official documentation.
Adams has been trying to have it both ways here, railing against Abbott and lamenting the supposed strain placed on city resources and in particular the shelter system while projecting a welcoming stance to his liberal base. Right-wing media has quickly seized on these complaints, framing Adams’ comments as an admission that migrants are an encumbrance, with a representative headline from the National Review reading “Mayor Adams: Influx of Illegal Aliens a ‘Real Burden’ on New Yorkers.”. Some homelessness advocates and nonprofits have accused the mayor of scapegoating the migrants for a shelter system that has deteriorated for other reasons.
It certainly hasn’t all been smooth sailing, with migrants reporting that they are being asked for paperwork that they are very unlikely to have. NYC Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins is now being investigated for allegedly trying to cover up the fact that some migrant families were left to sleep at an intake center overnight in violation of the right-to-shelter consent decree. The Department of Education is scrambling to enroll over a thousand recently-arrived children ahead of the impending start of school. Advocates have expressed concern about a proposal to house around 600 asylum seekers at one midtown hotel, while officials continue to examine permanent housing options in a city with a near-zero affordable housing vacancy rate. Meanwhile, friction keeps increasing between the aid groups on the ground and the mayor’s office, who they accuse of treating the situation mainly as a political opportunity.
This is all exacerbated by the fact that, since this is a stunt, Texas is not coordinating at all with the city and just sending buses. According to Abbott’s office, the state has sent about 900 migrants to the city so far, including 140 yesterday. City officials themselves have said that about 6,300 migrants have entered city shelters over the summer, but it’s worth noting that they have yet to provide any methodology for this number or clarify how exactly it was arrived at. Given the city’s sanctuary provisions, no one is asked immigration status upon entering a shelter, though there would certainly be some indications that someone was an asylum seeker, and some would have been referred directly from local nonprofits.
How we got here
First, it’s important to note that there is nothing new about migrants being released from CBP custody and traveling to cities far from the border while they await their court dates. This practice, which critics have decried as “catch and release” for well over two decades, isn’t due to a “border crisis” or to a surge in arrivals, but rather due to the simple fact that ICE does not have—and has never had—the capacity to detain every single person who asks for asylum at the border.
That said, Border Patrol and CBP have in the past attempted to create the optics of a border crisis, often by releasing migrants en masse into border communities with few transit options and leaving local officials to deal with them. In 2019, for example, Border Patrol released thousands of migrants in Deming, New Mexico—a city of around 14,000—over the course of a few weeks. In Texas, migrants were released in small towns along the border and then bussed to San Antonio, where city officials set up a resource center to help migrants get to their final destination. Last April, the agency did the same thing in small Arizona border towns. At the time, the media focus was on the perception that small border communities were being overwhelmed by a “wave” of migrants and had to use city resources to get them to their final destination. Not much attention was paid to where migrants ended up, though immigration officials under Trump warned that Florida, New York, and Michigan should prepare for the arrival of “thousands” of migrants.
This time around, the optics are a bit different. Abbott is claiming that the Biden administration is releasing an unprecedented number of migrants into border communities, and is then using state resources to bus those migrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” like New York and Washington, D.C. He’s simultaneously accusing the administration of opening the border and accusing sanctuary jurisdictions of hypocrisy when they claim to be overwhelmed by a sudden increase in arrivals.
Under Obama, Border Patrol and CBP implemented a Safe Release policy in which asylum seekers who processed their credible fear screenings received federal assistance to get to their final destinations. The Trump administration ended the policy in 2019, prompting lawsuits by jurisdictions that suddenly had to figure out how to handle migrants’ transportation on their own, often with little communication from federal immigration agencies.
Abbott started bussing migrants to Washington, D.C. in April. At the time, the governor’s office said it was a way of bringing Biden’s supposed “border crisis” to the president’s doorstep. Texas then started asking for private donations to fund the bus trips. As we noted above, Abbott’s immigration stance is entirely about optics and owning the libs, not about material consequences; plenty of migrants are, in fact, happy to accept free trips to New York and Washington, D.C., though the conditions on the buses are reportedly substandard. This isn’t the first time Abbott’s trolling-as-governance policies have inadvertently benefitted migrants in some way. Operation Lone Star, in which the National Guard arrested migrants for trespassing, thereby transferring them to criminal custody, allowed some asylum seekers to circumvent the Title 42 expulsion process.
What’s next?
For now, there’s every indication that asylum seekers will keep being bussed to NYC. There’s no political incentive for Abbott to stop, as it accomplishes the dual goals of moving migrants out of Texas and looking like he’s sticking it to the big-city liberals who would fancy themselves sanctuary jurisdictions. Similarly, it’s unlikely that the state will start up any real coordination with the city before it sends buses north, meaning that we’ll continue to see somewhat haphazard arrivals of people who often need immediate medical attention and food as soon as they disembark, as Texas has made it a point not to provide any care.
If there does turn out to be somewhat conclusive or preponderant evidence that asylum seekers are indeed being forced or tricked into getting on the buses and prevented from leaving, then the practice could potentially be stopped with a lawsuit or even a criminal referral. It of course remains unlawful to force someone into what is effectively government custody and transport them across state lines without any charges or formal authority, particularly by state law enforcement.
Those who’ve already arrived in the city aren’t out of the woods yet. As mentioned above, the city is still working to secure temporary housing for the new arrivals and trying to get them into schools, and fundamentally the city bureaucracy was not prepared for hundreds of arrivals with the acute set of needs that this population in particular has. If Abbott is able to ramp up his bussing campaign, or rope other states into it, the problems will multiply unless the city acts now to build out processing frameworks and systems.
In addition to the housing and other immediate needs, the arriving migrants are still in removal proceedings, and will have to win their asylum cases in order to be able to remain in the country. Fortunately for them, New York City immigration courts actually have statistically much higher grant rates for asylum than those in Texas, and much greater access to crucial legal representation, meaning that Abbott may actually be dramatically improving their odds of staying in the country.
For all that to happen, they need to be able to get to court and know basic information about their court dates, which is presenting another problem. As we’ve covered before, federal agents haven’t always been very concerned with giving migrants correct, accurate, or even legally permissible documentation. They have given migrants fake future court dates, sent notices with hearing dates “TBD”—a practice which was specifically ruled illegal by the Supreme Court—or taken down migrants’ contact addresses as vaguely as “Facebook.”
Now, it seems like CBP is sending out documentation to random nonprofits in New York without confirming whether migrants are actually there or being served by those organizations. Some reports have also described notices with made-up addresses, fake phone numbers, and, particularly gallingly, doodled smiley faces in place of signatures. If the documents don’t ultimately make it to their intended recipients, or they don’t have the correct information to allow migrants to know when and where to report for their court hearings, they can be ordered deported in absentia.