LOS ANGELES — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday on social media that migrants had been transported from Texas to Los Angeles.
“The first bus of migrants from Texas has arrived in Los Angeles,” the Republican governor posted on Twitter.
“Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico because of President Biden’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott said in an accompanying news release. “Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status.”
The migrants were dropped off at a church in Chinatown, according to Fox News’ Elex Michaelson.
The group included more than 40 people, including a number of minors, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Abbott called the transportation of migrants “much-needed relief” for the border.
Abbott’s announcement comes after two planes carrying migrants arrived in Sacramento with transportation arranged by the state of Florida.
In the first flight, more than a dozen migrants from South America were flown on a chartered jet from New Mexico and dropped off in Sacramento.
Documents carried by the migrants appeared to show that the flight was arranged through the Florida Division of Emergency Management and that it was part of the state’s program to relocate migrants, mostly from Texas, to other states, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said. Florida officials later took responsibility for the chartered flights.
The contractor for the program is Vertol Systems Co., which coordinated similar flights that took dozens of Venezuelan asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts last year, he said.
A spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the DeSantis administration for using Florida taxpayers’ dollars to send migrants from “Texas through New Mexico to California to get votes in Iowa and New Hampshire” — a swipe at the Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate campaigning in those pivotal states to secure the GOP nomination.
Some migrants last week told the Los Angeles Times how contractors working for the state of Florida offered them seats on a private plane to California.
