People take buses from border towns like El Paso, Texas, to Colorado. It’s unclear whether any government officials have paid for these north trips.
In an email, an Abbott representative said, “We still only bus to Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia.” The El Paso mayor’s office said that they had not planned any trips to Denver. However, many different groups, from the county to nonprofits, are helping migrants get out of Texas. Polis said that most people helping migrants have been doing their jobs honestly.
“Too many people, in our opinion, see this through a political lens or as playing politics, and it’s terrible that people have been used as political props in some places,” he said. “But by treating people with dignity and respect, we are just living up to our values here.”
Adams said on Tuesday that around 30,000 people seeking asylum have come to New York City since the spring. These people need food, shelter, and education, and their arrival has put the city’s social service infrastructure to the limit and put the city’s budget at significant risk. Adams and the two leaders of Colorado have asked the federal government to help communities deal with the influx of people.
“No city should have to choose between taking care of its people and taking care of a flood of migrants and asylum seekers,” he said. “This is especially true for cities near Covid.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to send migrants to big cities like New York, said Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday. He warned that the country’s biggest city is already struggling to deal with a flood of people sent from Texas and other Republican-led states.
But shortly after that, the state’s Democratic governor told POLITICO that the state has been helping asylum seekers get to their final destinations, like New York City, for weeks. The only thing that has changed is that a recent winter storm and the chaos it caused on the roads caused a backlog of people who wanted to leave Denver. This backlog is now being cleared out.
Adams said these things during a Tuesday morning radio show. “We found out yesterday that the governor of Colorado is now saying that they are going to send migrants to places like New York and Chicago,” Adams said during a radio interview. “It’s not fair that local governments have to take on a national responsibility like this.”
An assistant to Adams said that the mayor’s office was told about the crowds on Monday night. Denver, like many other big cities in the U.S., has had trouble keeping up with the number of people who have fled their homes in Central and South America, crossed the southern border, and asked for asylum in the U.S. According to the city, more than 3,500 migrants have come to Denver in the past month. Around 1,800 asylum seekers stay in the town each night.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock declared a state of emergency and later asked the local Catholic archdiocese for help. He and Polis, who are both Democrats, also started a fund to raise money for migrant services.
Polis said that the state has recently made $5 million available to help pay for costs. Even though about 70% of asylum seekers who come to Denver are going elsewhere, the cost of assisting them in buying bus tickets is a small part of the total.
Due to the recent winter storm, which slowed down holiday travel and caused Southwest Airlines to have a logistical meltdown, which caused a rush on bus tickets, the Denver mayor’s office reached out to the Adams administration to let them know that more migrants than usual may be arriving by bus. Polis said that he thought the number of people arriving by bus would decrease in a week or two.
“There is a lot of pent-up demand right now and a lot of frustration among our migrants who have been stuck for a week or two in a place they didn’t want to be through no fault of their own,” he said. On Tuesday, Polis announced a partnership between the state, the city, and local nonprofits to improve transportation services for asylum seekers trying to leave Colorado. Hancock’s office supported this plan.
Hancock said in a statement on Tuesday, “I appreciate [Polis] and the State for stepping up to help people coming to our city get to where they want to go and to help reduce the number of people in our shelters and connect them more quickly with community supports and other options.” “I’ve talked to other mayors from around the country, and we all agree that Congress and the Biden Administration need to work together to give us the help we need to handle this situation.”
In the past few weeks, thousands of migrants have tried to enter the U.S. through the southern border. This is partly because Title 42, a Trump administration border policy, was set to end in December. Last week, the Supreme Court stopped the policy from being changed, which lets the U.S. send people home to stop the spread of Covid-19.
During the spring and summer, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott sent thousands of migrants from the border by bus to blue strongholds like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Meanwhile, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis flew nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, mainly from Venezuela. He said it was to bring attention to what was going on at the border.
But the border problem has worsened in the last few weeks. After many migrants started coming to El Paso in December, the city’s Democratic mayor, Oscar Leeser, called a state of emergency. Abbott also sent hundreds of state troopers and members of the Texas National Guard to the border to stop people from coming into the U.S
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