Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to continue busing immigrants north from his state of Texas during the Republican National Convention. But while his declarations were met with roaring applause, are there enough immigrants to do so? It seems that is starting to not be the case anymore.
"We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country," Abbott told the crowd in Milwaukee during the Convention in mid-July. "Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border."
However, the past few months have seen a steady decline in migrant apprehensions at the southern border, leading buses to roll their way north inconsistently, according to a new report by NBC News.
"They now come much less frequently," said Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of New York, "because they don't have enough people to cross the border to fill up a bus."
Roughly 117,000 migrants were stopped in May, down from a record 300,000 in December. In June, the number dropped even further to about 84,000 and to around 60,000 in July, the lowest monthly total since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, NBC News reports.
One of the main reasons for this plunge can be due to a Mexican operation to crackdown on immigration.
That tactic followed a December meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican officials including President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. It has seen Mexican security forces set up new checkpoints on roads, increase patrols, and in some cases, remove migrants from freight trains headed towards the U.S. border.
Another reason for the sharp decrease may be due to Biden's executive action in June which temporarily shut down the southern border when daily migrant crossings between legal ports of entry exceed 2,500, with the border reopening when the number falls below 1,500.
With border crossings decreasing, a spokesman for Abbott acknowledged that there were now fewer migrants to bus out of state, but said that it was the governor's actions in Texas that fueled the drop in migrants crossing the border.
"Texas has decreased illegal crossings into the state by 85% thanks to our historic border mission," the spokesman, Andrew Maheris, said. "Fewer illegal crossings into Texas means there are fewer buses departing for sanctuary cities."
Abbott started busing migrants to sanctuary cities in 2022 as part of Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion program designed to address the migrant surge in Texas.
It has been several months since a single bus left the border towns of Del Rio and McAllen, local officials and migrant shelter operators told NBC News. Similarly, the last buses to leave Laredo and Brownsville rolled out in January. Meanwhile, the number of buses leaving El Paso has fallen off sharply in the past few months.
"The opportunity exists for buses every Wednesday if the need is there," said Bill Irvin, of the non profit Opportunity Center for the Homeless. "And honestly, I have not had the need to use those buses from here for six to eight weeks. But that shows you how low the census has become amongst all of the shelters here in El Paso."
Officials in other states, however, say buses have not arrived since January. For instance, the last bus to reach Philadelphia arrived on Dec. 17 with 29 people from Del Rio, according to a spokesperson with the city's Office of Immigrant Affairs.
Likewise, no Texas buses have arrived in Washington, D.C. this year, and none are believed to have reached into Los Angeles since Jan. 20
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