Texas governor sends migrants to Denver

First, he asked fellow governors to send law enforcement officers and soldiers to "help secure" the border. Then he chose Denver as the fifth destination city to bus migrants to from the Texas border, and the first group of migrants arrived in the Colorado capital last week.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott continues to make the border a major political issue on his agenda despite that migrant crossings have dropped significantly since Title 42 expired on May 11.

Abbott said that his request to other governors was prompted by the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed authorities to expel migrants without letting them request asylum, for health reasons.

He accused President Joe Biden of "systematically dismantling every effective border security policy" in his to other governors asking for help.

"In the federal government's absence, we, as governors, must band together to combat Biden's ongoing border crisis and ensure the safety and security that all Americans deserve," Abbott said in his letter.

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who made news when he flew people to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts last year, quickly responded that he was prepared to commit 1,100 National Guard soldiers and law enforcement personnel to help Texas.

The Biden administration has issued various immigration orders in anticipation of Title 42's lifting, including providing new options to seek asylum without going to the southern border and imposing stiffer penalty on asylum seekers who try to cross border illegally.

The day before Abbott sent out the plea letter, Blas Nuñez-Neto, an assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Homeland Security Department, said in a conference that border migrant encounters had dropped by half since Title 42 ended.

In the days before Title 42 ended late on the night of May 17, immigration agents had about 10,000 encounters a day with migrants at the southern border; that number has dropped to about 5,000 a day, according to Nunez-Neto.

Busing migrants to Democrat-led cities has gained Abbott a lot of attention. So far, he has bused 19,000 migrants to New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Philadelphia.

The first group of 41 migrants bused by Abbott arrived in downtown Denver on the afternoon of May 18 near the Colorado State Capitol Building.

"Until the president and his administration step up and fulfill their constitutional duty to secure the border, Texas will continue busing migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities like Denver to provide much-needed relief to our small border towns," Abbott said in a statement.

"It's nothing more than political theater," Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said. "Buffoonery is what it is, and it's really a very insensitive, disingenuous act from someone who claims to be a servant of the people, and he really isn't."

Denver is already struggling to accommodate migrants. The city's website showed that it has received more than 10,000 migrants since last December, and currently is sheltering more than 1,200 migrants in five shelters. Denver said it has spent about $17 million on aid while receiving only $900,000 from Washington.

"What none of us need is more political theater and partisan gamesmanship pitting jurisdictions against each other and exacerbating this situation instead of advocating for real solutions to this challenge," Hancock said in a statement. He also said Denver intends to send Abbott a bill "for any additional support we have to provide now because of his failure at managing his own state''.

Hancock has said that Denver is not a "sanctuary city" for migrants, but in 2017, the City Council adopted an ordinance prohibiting "city employees from collecting information on immigration or citizenship status; prohibits the sharing of any other information about individuals for purposes of immigration enforcement; and memorializes predominant practices by prohibiting use of city resources or City cooperation with civil immigration enforcement".