“The dispatch of the buses provides much-needed relief to our devastated border communities,” the statement said. “Operation Lone Star continues to plug the dangerous loopholes left by the Biden administration’s refusal to secure the border.” A vocal critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, Abbott began busing hundreds of willing immigrants to D.C. earlier this year as an affront to the administration. Abbott’s office has said that “to board a bus or flight, an immigrant must volunteer to be transported and present documents from DHS.” New York has received record numbers of immigrants this week and more buses are expected, a spokesman for the mayor’s Office of Immigration told CNN on Saturday. Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials have previously accused the Abbott administration of forcing asylum seekers onto New York-bound buses and failing to coordinate with city officials to transport people. Earlier this month, city officials said recruitment centers were already overwhelmed with more than 4,000 people since the boom began in May. “It’s unimaginable. You come to a country and your first visit here, someone throws you out, like the Governor of Texas does, and then tries to go around this complicated country to offer your services,” Adams told an unrelated press event earlier this time. month. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN on Thursday that Abbott’s efforts to bus immigrants to DC and New York is gutting the federal immigration processing system and criticized the governor for not coordinating with federal authorities. Mallorca said it is “problematic” when an official like Abbott works “unilaterally”. “This lack of coordination is causing problems in our very efficient processing,” Mayorkas told CNN in Eagle Pass while at the US-Mexico border on Thursday, adding that it makes DHS’s job “more difficult.” Mayorkas criticized Abbott for not working with destination cities. “These cities have some potential,” he said. “They have the infrastructure to deal with the needs of immigrants and we have to calibrate the movement of people according to their abilities and their efficiency. And that’s not happening.” Mayorkas said his department has reached out to Abbott to seek better coordination, but Abbott has not responded. CNN’s Rosa Flores, Rosalina Nieves and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.
