New York City Mayor Eric Adams should sue the Biden administration for the influx of migrants flooding the city instead of suing 17 charter bus and transportation companies involved in transporting migrants from Texas to New York City, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott told Fox News Sunday.
"He needs to be suing Joe Biden, not these bus companies, because it's Joe Biden and Joe Biden's policies that's causing the massive, multimillion influx into the United States that leads to many of them wanting to go to New York," Abbott said.
Since August 2022, Texas has bussed more than 33,000 migrants to New York as local leaders in border states complained that the number of migrants had reached crisis levels.
Abbott, a Republican, has predicted that Adams, a Democrat, is is going "to lose badly" in court, because "the lawsuit is completely legally baseless ... [since] everybody who is bussed to or are planed to New York is already authorized by the Biden administration to be within the United States legally."
On Thursday, Adams announced the $708 million lawsuit against the 17 bus companies, citing "reckless political ploys from the state of Texas."
Adams said, "New York City has and will always do our part to manage this humanitarian crisis, but we cannot bear the costs of reckless political ploys from the state of Texas alone. Today, we are taking legal action against 17 companies that have taken part in Texas Governor Abbott's scheme to transport tens of thousands of migrants to New York City in an attempt to overwhelm our social services system."
Abbott told Fox News on Sunday, "The state of Texas law does not conflict with federal law. And, hence, that's one reason why we will avoid the preemption allegation made by the federal government. The second one is preemption does not apply because the federal government is refusing to enforce the laws passed by Congress. Because they are not enforcing the laws passed by Congress, the law that we passed simply enforces the laws passed by Congress."