El Paso halts migrant buses to NYC, Chicago

El Paso, Texas, has stopped sending charter buses with migrants to New York and Chicago, citing a new Biden administration policy to expel most Venezuelan migrants to the US-Mexico border instead of admitting them into the US to seek asylum.

The final two buses left on Oct 20. The center, where the busing operation was based, was also shut down.

“Due to the new policy action for Venezuelans taken last week by the Department of Homeland Security, [US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)] discontinued sending migrants to the city this week because of a significant decrease in encounters,” El Paso city spokeswoman Laura Cruz-Acosta said as quoted in El Paso Matters.

As the number of border crossings surged, CBP had released more than 43,000 migrants into El Paso in the past 10 weeks, according to information maintained by the city. The number dropped to 1,664 last week from a high of around 6,000 a week. About 70 percent of the migrants were from Venezuela.

The large number of migrants overwhelmed El Paso shelters, and the city’s Emergency Management Office began sending charter buses to New York and Chicago in late August. City officials said all who boarded the buses stated they wanted to go to those cities.

El Paso sent a total of 292 buses to New York or Chicago carrying almost 14,000 migrants, of which more than 10,000 were sent to New York City, leading to a shelter crisis there.

El Paso’s action was modeled after Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which started busing migrants in April to New York, Washington DC, and other Democratic-leaning cities.

While Abbott accused the Biden administration of adopting an “open border” policy, CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus criticized Abbott’s maneuver in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, saying it has become a “pull factor” encouraging migrants to come to the border.

The Biden administration issued a directive to expel Venezuelan nationals at the US-Mexico border effective Oct 18 to address “the challenges posed by irregular migration and the increasing number of encounters of Venezuelan nationals”, the Department of Homeland Security said in the notice.

The legal premise of the policy is Title 42, which was enacted in response to the pandemic by the Trump administration. It allows immigration agents to expel migrants on public health grounds without allowing them to request asylum.

For fiscal year 2020 ending Sept 31, more than 2.37 million encounters were recorded at the US-Mexico border, a record high. More than 189,000 encounters were people from Venezuela, according to CBP data, a big jump from last year’s 50,499.

The notice implemented a new process modeled after the visa program for Ukraine refugees. Up to 24,000 Venezuelan nationals may apply for asylum from outside of the US.

To be eligible, individuals must have a passport and a financial sponsor in the US and must arrive in the country by plane. They will be disqualified if they have entered unauthorized into the US, Panama or Mexico after Oct 19.

That means many Venezuelans who are on their way to any of those countries in hopes of reaching the US-Mexico border to seek asylum would be disqualified. Some critics said that such policy will disqualify poorer Venezuelans who don’t have the proper paperwork and know someone in the US.