Texas Governor Greg Abbott has defied demands from New York Mayor Eric Adams about when migrants can arrive in the city – with the latest busload set to be dropped off just as the ball drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve.
Last week, Adams issued an executive order that buses could only arrive at the Port Authority to drop off migrants between 8:30 a.m. and noon Monday through Friday unless authorized to do otherwise.
Nevertheless, a bus carrying about 50 asylum seekers bound for the Big Apple left El Paso, Texas, around 11 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The bus, which included women and children, will arrive in Gotham just before midnight on Sunday evening, the charter driver told DailyMail.com.
“We have to be back on the road by midnight,” he said. “Everyone is celebrating New Year's and we're driving back.”
Migrants in New York City are seen being bused to a shelter after arriving from Texas
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, held a joint news conference Wednesday with the mayors of Chicago and Denver, who are also struggling to deal with the increase in migrants
Officials in Texas would not confirm whether they had received permission to leave migrants in New York beyond the time set by Adams.
The two-member driving team was later scolded by state officials for speaking to DailyMail.com.
When asked about Adams' executive order, a Venezuelan woman taking a bus in Texas to New York said, “We're not all the same.” Maybe some migrants already there have done things they weren't supposed to do.
'We're going to work there. We just need an opportunity,” she added.
The woman, who asked not to be named but said she was traveling with her 11-year-old daughter, said they entered the U.S. via El Paso on Christmas Day.
They were excited to make New York their final destination after leaving Venezuela almost two months ago.
“Work, that's all we want is work,” said a migrant man standing next to the mother and daughter.
Migrants are seen arriving in Chicago on a bus from Texas
Chicago has spent $138 million on the crisis, which is only expected to worsen as temperatures drop as winter progresses
El Paso city officials worked with state officials to transport more than 17,000 migrants from the West Texas city
In a similar move to New York, Chicago has also cracked down on how and when buses from Texas can drop off migrants.
Another bus to Denver left before noon and there were three buses waiting to be filled.
That city's mayor and elected officials in Chicago's suburbs have passed local ordinances that require Texas to notify Illinois officials and also regulate where migrants can be dropped off, as this often ties up local resources.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott chartered a private plane earlier this month for about 120 migrants to avoid roadblocks in Chicago, and has said more planes are coming.
In border cities like El Paso, where migrants reporting to federal authorities are never-ending, getting people on a bus to their final destination is critical to prevent local resources from collapsing.
Migrant shelters in West Texas are full and a vacant center shelter is now housing migrants.
The beleaguered Eagle Pass saw more than 22,000 migrants arrive in their small town in just one week, Border Patrol confirmed.
The city's population is only 28,000.
“Texas communities like Eagle Pass and El Paso should not have to endure the unprecedented wave of illegal immigration caused by President Biden's reckless open border policies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott previously said.
It comes as around 1,300 migrants have made their way through the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua since Christmas Day.
A second massive wave could reach the border within weeks, when a huge caravan of 6,000 to 8,000 people currently in southern Mexico arrives.
El Paso, which was the epicenter of the border crisis for much of last year, has three larger processing centers built over the past 12 months specifically to handle the flow of migrants at the border.
Although the city encounters about 1,000 migrants a day — far fewer than the current hotspots of Lukeville, Arizona, or Eagle Pass, Texas, where 10 times that number cross the border — officials here have the ability to quickly scale up their response if that number is peaking.
