Greg Abbott Rebuked by Largest Texas Newspaper for 'Sowing Chaos'
Above, a photo of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Texas’s largest newspaper on Sunday accused Abbott of “sowing chaos” with his migrant busing tactic.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been accused of “sowing chaos” by the state’s largest newspaper on Sunday due to his ongoing tactic of busing migrants to major Democratic-led cities in the north.
Since August 2022 at the behest of the Republican governor, Texas officials have been busing newly arrived migrants from the southern border to various major metropolitan areas in the north run by Democratic leaders who have clashed with Abbott and other GOP lawmakers on border security policies. Since then, the program has seen around 34,000 migrants transported to New York City alone, causing particular difficulties for the city that boasts a longstanding “right-to-shelter” law. Earlier this month, PBS reported that around 160,000 migrants have arrived in New York City overall since the spring of 2022.
In an op-ed published on Sunday, the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, the biggest newspaper in the Lone Star State, called Abbott a “genius” for the tactic, which it characterized as a “devious plot,” crediting the busing program for shifting Democratic rhetoric on border security issues. At the same time, the piece titled, “If migrants bused from Texas can’t make it in New York, can they make it anywhere?” accused the governor of “sowing chaos” without offering real solutions and called the tactic “cruel [and] opportunistic.”
“In doing so, Abbott is not only sowing chaos in New York; he’s attempting to erode support for critical legal protections such as migrants’ right to seek asylum and New York’s right-to-shelter law,” the piece reads. “He has effectively put President Joe Biden in the uncomfortable position of having to confront the fact that the massive wave of migrants arriving at our border is, indeed, a ‘crisis,’ despite administration officials’ preference to call it anything but that.”
Newsweek reached out to Abbott’s office via email for comment.
The piece also suggested various ways that lawmakers can address the migrant situation by streamlining the processes that allow them to seek asylum and begin contributing to the cities where they end up. Specifically, the editorial board called for the expedition of work permits for migrants, as has been called for by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
“Many of the new migrants have myriad skills and yearn to work and contribute to the city,” the piece argues. “Allowing them to find work will free up shelter space and, eventually, benefit the city economically.”
The newspaper’s editorial board further suggested that the federal government should bolster the number of asylum officers employed at the U.S.-Mexico border and implement a system that grants priority to newer arrivals, so as to “help clear the backlog of 1.6 million pending asylum cases.”
There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Ultimately, the piece argued that a true solution to the issues at the southern border would require “real leadership” from Abbott and others, as opposed to “grandstanding.”
“Abbott, meanwhile, should really find something more constructive to do with his creative genius,” the piece added. “He was right that busing migrants to so-called sanctuary cities would draw needed attention to the border crisis and cause dissent among Democrats who otherwise support Biden. But what now? Where does the stunt end and the solution begin?”
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