Chicago Mayor: Abbott's Migrant Busing Is a 'Manufactured Crisis'

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot decried on Saturday Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's busing of migrants to Chicago as "un-American," according to The Hill.

Speaking on CNN, Lightfoot told host Pamela Brown that migrants are being placed on buses with a "lack of dignity ... to an unknown destination with very little food, very little water."

"What I don't like to see is people taking these cross-country trips, getting off the bus, and being immediately taken to the hospital because they were put on the buses with delicate medical conditions that no one in Texas seemed to care anything about. That is simply not right, and it's un-American."

Lightfoot added, "This is a manufactured crisis on the part of Gov. Abbott. We can all do our part. And I believe that we all must do our part. But we've got to do it with collaboration, with cooperation."

Florida attorney general Ashley Moody, who is spearheading a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its border policies, said last month on Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" that when Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz was asked during discovery for the lawsuit if "this was a crisis," at the border, he responded, "Yes." And when he was asked if "the numbers this year alone [were] going to be unprecedented — something we've never seen," he again responded, "Yes.

"Is this putting American lives and migrant lives at risk? Yes.

"This is the chief of the border patrol," Moody said. "So when the Biden White House comes in and says, 'Nothing to see here,' we know that is not true."

According to Axios, Texas has sent thousands of migrants to New York; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. On Thursday, Washington declared a public emergency in response to the influx of migrants. Accordingly, other cities have also begun preparing for migrants.

Kevin Lessard, a spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, said, "The city is inventorying existing resources, should those seeking safe refuge find their way to Philadelphia."

During Lightfoot's interview, she was asked if she would be OK with Abbott's initiative if the migrants would receive better care. In response, the Chicago mayor called it a "unilateral political stunt."

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, as of July, the number of southwest land border encounters totaled 199,976. So far, the total number of land border encounters for fiscal year 2022 has exceeded 2021. In 2021, the total southwest encounters were 1,734,686. In 2022, the data for which goes only to July, the number of encounters are 1,946,780.

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