Texas Governor Greg Abbott hit back at President Joe Biden on Monday after the president issued criticism of a Texas program which voluntarily relocates migrants at the U.S. Southern border to self-proclaimed sanctuary cities.
Three buses filled with about 130 immigrants stopped and let their passengers off outside the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, D.C. on the evening of Dec. 24. While the buses were initially destined for New York, they rerouted to D.C. because of road closures and low temperatures, an aid worker told The New York Times.
On Christmas morning, the White House lashed out at Abbott over his actions.
“Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authorities,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, according to the Times. “This was a cruel, dangerous and shameful stunt.”
“These political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger,” he added.
In response, Abbott’s office issued a scathing statement, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Biden Administration.
“The White House is full of a bunch of hypocrites, led by the Hypocrite-in-Chief,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement, according to ABC News. “Instead of their hypocritical complaints about Texas providing much-needed relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities, President Biden and Border Czar Harris need to step up and do their jobs to secure the border — something they continue failing to do.”
The migrants “were processed and released by the federal government,” Eze said, saying that the relocation of migrants from the Texas border to sanctuary cities is “providing much-needed relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities.”
In El Paso, Texas, one of the hardest hit communities of the border crisis, dozens of homeless migrants have slept in the city’s streets in recent weeks, as government and nonprofit facilities for migrant care are overcrowded. The city, which is operating its own bussing program to relocate migrants, paid for several buses to idle on the city’s streets over the holiday weekend, so that migrants could warm up as the nights began to drop below freezing temperatures.
On Tuesday afternoon, The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump-era Title 42 would remain in place for the foreseeable future. Should they have ruled to allow the policy to end, many experts predicted that the motion would spark a flood of migrants over the U.S. border.
In addition to shelters in the U.S., tens of thousands of migrants are currently staying in shelters on the Mexico side of the border. At least 22,000 migrants are staying in shelters in the border cities of Tijuana, Reynosa, and Matamoros, CNN reports.
