Texas Governor Greg Abbott's plan to transport migrants to so-called sanctuary cities, which offer to welcome asylum seekers and promise not to partner with federal authorities like ICE, has disrupted those major metropolitan areas and strained their resources to support the thousands that have arrived.
Cities like Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago have already spent millions to shelter the migrants that Abbott has bussed up north. As more people arrive each day, the mayors of those cities are scrambling to find housing for them.
Abbott began sending migrants just over a year ago in protest of the Biden administration's immigration policies. Since President Joe Biden took office, there has been a surge in asylum seekers at the southern border and towns on the border, including many in Texas, have become overwhelmed by the number of people seeking refuge.
Last Thursday, Title 42—a pandemic-era rule that allowed officials to quickly expel migrants who enter the U.S. illegally—expired, prompting even more people to head toward the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of being granted asylum. Apprehensions at the border reached some of the highest ever recorded last week, with some days seeing roughly 11,000 encounters.
As Republicans advocated for tighter immigration laws, mayors of Democratic cities vowed to be a "sanctuary city" for migrants, offering a more hospitable vision that has proved to be popular among progressives. In response, Abbott sent migrants to those cities—a move that those like New York City Mayor Eric Adams have said exploited cities that are committed to ensuring the government treats migrants humanely.
On Friday, officials in New York City announced plans to offer housing for at least 75 migrants in a stand-alone school gym in Coney Island. The city's "right-to-shelter" law, the only of its kind in a major U.S. city, has made it difficult for Adams to fulfill the city's obligation to immediately find private rooms for asylum seekers.
Residents in the Brooklyn neighborhood were reportedly "concerned" over the plans to temporarily use the gym as a shelter. Ari Kagan, a councilman whose district includes Coney Island, told the New York Times that he "got a lot of phone calls from concerned parents, from community leaders. Nobody, nobody expressed their support for this plan."
Adams' office has defended its handling of the influx of people, repeatedly stressing that the nation is "in the midst of a humanitarian crisis." New York City has already opened more than 130 emergency sites and eight large-scale human relief sites which serve more than 65,000 asylum seekers.
Concerns in New York City echo those in Chicago, where residents in the city's South Side have a filed lawsuit against the city and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) over the plans to house migrants at a former high school.
Earlier this month, the city of Chicago announced it would open the old school as a "respite center" for at least 250 and up to 500 migrants who had been bussed from Texas. Chicago has set up at least 10 shelters across the city and budgeted $125 million to support migrants this year alone.
But community members in the South Side neighborhood claim that city officials never consulted them or included them in the conversations about housing migrants at the former school. Some have also expressed frustration that the city has rushed to help migrants while ignoring the needs of the residents that have lived in the neighborhood for decades.
"This is not about the migrants," Natasha Dunn, a South Shore resident who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said during a press conference last week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. "This is about the entire city of Chicago ignoring our community because this school belongs to us."
Migrants have also strained resources in Washington, D.C., where $15.1 million has already been spent on hotel rooms, food and other aid and where costs are expected to rise to $53.2 million by October, the district's Department of Human Services says. More than 7,400 migrants have been bused to the nation's capital, according to Abbott's office.
Earlier this month, the city reached hotel capacity for migrant families, saying that the Office of Migrant Services had to stop taking in new arrivals as officials work to help families find "pathways for long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency." The cap has resulted in calls for the city council and Mayor Muriel Bowser to increase contingency funds.
However, some have raised concerns over how increasing the budget would change the crisis at the border or stem the influx of migrants.
"Spending more money without any changes to the system or support from other states and localities or the federal government would just put us right back here in a few weeks," At-Large Council member Robert C. White Jr. told the DCist.
Adams, Bowser and others have urged Abbott to halt the transportation of migrants, saying even while they sympathize with the crisis border towns are facing, the national issue requires a collaborative response. Abbott, however, has argued that migrants chose to go to those cities and criticized the Democratic mayor for walking a fine line on their commitment to being a "sanctuary city."
"Mayor Adams, along with Mayor Bowser, [Chicago] Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot, and [Philadelphia] Mayor [Jim] Kenney, were proud to tout their self-declared sanctuary city status until Texas began busing migrants to New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities," Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris previously told Newsweek.
