About 50 mainly Venezuelan migrants including a baby deposited unannounced at Naval Observatory in Washington
About 50 migrants, including a one-month-old baby, have been sent in a bus from Texas to the Washington DC residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the latest move by Republican-led states to transfer migrants unannounced across the country.
The bus let off the migrants, who are believed to be mostly Venezuelan, outside the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of US vice-presidents, on Saturday morning.
They had been sent by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, while another group were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, on a flight organized by Florida governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week.
Democratic politicians, immigration advocates and lawyers have decried the transfers and called for them to be investigated for potential trafficking offences. In an interview filmed on Friday, Harris told Vice News: “They are playing games. These are political stunts with real
She added: “I think it is the height of irresponsibility much less, just frankly a dereliction of duty when you are an elected leader, to play those kinds of games with human life, and human beings.”
Abbott also sent three buses of migrants that arrived in New York City on Saturday. Abbott had already sent two buses of migrants to Harris’s residence on Thursday, containing about 100 people from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.
The latest transfers are an escalation of a series of actions by Texas and Florida, both led by Republicans, to move migrants without warning to Democratic-leaning areas. On Wednesday, DeSantis of Florida chartered two planes to take about 50 migrant adults and children to the wealthy liberal island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, forcing local residents to scramble to help provide food and shelter for the unexpected newcomers.
Several of the migrants told journalists there was nobody at the airport to greet them, and they walked almost four miles to find help in the town, where they were put up in a church overnight.
DeSantis has said that every community in America, not just those on the border with Mexico, should be “sharing the load” in dealing with what he has framed as a failed border policy by Joe Biden. Abbott said that he will continue to send migrants to “sanctuary cities” until Biden and Harris “step up and do their jobs to secure the border”.
”READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/17/texas-migrants-kamala-harris-washington-home
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