Three busloads of illegal immigrants were reportedly dropped off near Vice President Kamala Harris's Washington D.C. residence on Saturday (Christmas Eve), courtesy of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.
According to ABC 7 in Washington, the migrants arrived outside the Naval Observatory (Harris's residence), amid below-freezing temperatures, and were later relocated to a church through the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, a local aid group.
"Tonight, on Christmas Eve, Gov. Abbott's buses dropped off migrants at the VP's house in the freezing cold," the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network wrote Sunday morning, via Twitter. "This is not new, it has been happening for 8 months."
Covering much of this calendar year, Governor Abbott — as a means of calling attention to the chaos at the United States-Mexico border — has been relocating migrants to major cities such as New York City, Washington D.C., and Chicago.
Also, during the summer, Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shipped a number of illegal immigrants to the Massachusetts beach community of Martha's Vineyard — which had previously touted its "sanctuary" status — a move which generated a lot of media attention to the mess at the southern border.
Last week, Abbott wrote a letter to President Joe Biden, demanding his administration send federal assets to the southern border, in anticipation of Winter Storm Elliott wreaking havoc in Texas.
"You and your administration must stop the lie that the border is secure and, instead, immediately deploy federal assets to address the dire problems you have caused," Abbott wrote.
"You must execute the duties that the U.S. Constitution mandates you perform and secure the southern border before more innocent lives are lost," the Texas governor continued.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reiterated its public stance of "fully" enforcing "our immigration and public health laws at the border."
In a statement, the DHS also said that "individuals and families attempting to enter without authorization are being expelled, as required by court order under the Title 42 public health authority, or placed into removal proceedings.
"As temperatures remain dangerously low all along the border, no one should put their lives in the hands of smugglers, or risk life and limb attempting to cross only to be returned," the statement continued.
Title 42 — a Trump-era health order that prevented asylum-seekers from crossing the southern border, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — was slated to expire last week.
However, the Supreme Court paused the expiration of Title 42 before that deadline.
For the month of November, Border Patrol officials reported 212,000 migrant encounters at the southern border, according to Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council.
Judd estimated that 66,000 migrants were sent back to Mexico under Title 42. The rest were allowed to remain in the U.S. due to the loopholes of Title 8.
"And those people will never be heard from again, once their [immigration] court date comes up, and that's not going to be for several years," Judd told Newsmax last week. "It's basically 'amnesty' until [the migrants] have to show up for their final court hearing."
The above comment prompted another stat from Judd, who said that U.S. immigration officials have "released 3 million people into this country" since President Biden took office in January 2021 — considerably higher numbers than what occurred during the Trump administration.
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