Fifty more migrants arrived outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC on Saturday, days after two buses carrying asylum seekers arrived at her home at the Naval Observatory from Texas earlier this month. this week.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, Renae Eze, confirms to ABC News that 50 migrants were dropped off at the Vice President’s Naval Observatory residence on Saturday after a long bus ride from Texas.
Abbott said he sent two busloads of migrants to Harris’ residence on Thursday.
“We’re sending migrants into their backyard to ask the Biden administration to do its job and secure the border,” he tweeted at the time.
Abbott and other Republican leaders from border states have been sending migrants to Democratic-led cities for months, calling it a protest of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies amid an influx of migrants to the southern border.
Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stepped up the plan this week by dropping roughly 100 migrants out of Harris’ home in Washington and Martha’s Vineyard, the island south of Cape Cod where former President Barack Obama has a home.
The moves drew national attention and outrage from the White House and Democrats who said lawmakers were using the migrants as political pawns. Republicans have applauded the move, arguing that the Biden administration should do more to secure the border.
A group of mostly Venezuelan migrants, who were bussed from detention in Texas and then left outside the Naval Observatory, the official residence of US Vice President Kamala Harris, wait to be transported to Washington, 17 of September 2022.
Marat Sadana/Reuters
Some Democratic lawmakers said they received no advance warning of the migrants arriving.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said the state has since offered to voluntarily transport migrants out of Martha’s Vineyard to a temporary shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod.
A Venezuelan immigrant, Víctor, told ABC News’ Armando Garcia that he was there when someone asked migrants to sign their names on a list to get a seat on the plane. He didn’t sign up because the offer sounded too suspicious and because it didn’t line up with his plans to get to New York City.
Victor said he feels for the people who were tricked into taking these flights, but he understands why they took that risk.
“It’s complicated because they tell you that you will have everything you want, but when they arrived people were basically lost,” he said.
A group of mostly Venezuelan migrants, who were bused in from detention in Texas, are left outside the Naval Observatory, the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, on September 17, 2022.
Marat Sadana/Reuters
The White House said FEMA administrators have met with city officials at the site to coordinate available federal support, but have largely sidestepped questions about how to improve the immigration system, saying they inherited a broken Trump administration process.
President Joe Biden criticized the migrant abandonment as “simply wrong.”
“It’s un-American, it’s reckless, and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border,” he said at a gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “We’re working to make sure it’s safe, orderly and humane. Republican officials shouldn’t be interfering with that process by pulling these political stunts.”
On Friday DeSantis also said more migraine drops were coming.
“I have $12 million to use and so we will use it and you will see more and more. I will make sure that we use up all these funds,” he told a press conference.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of the story said the busloads of migrants were coming from El Paso. The governor’s office later clarified that the busloads of migrants to the vice president’s residence were sent from Texas, but not from El Paso.
ABC News’ Quinn Owen contributed to this report.