Texas sends 12th migrant bus to LA; city may seek legal action despite approving sanctuary status
Texas sent a 12th bus filled with migrants to Los Angeles, which arrived Monday morning nearly a week after city leaders voted to pursue legal action against the Lone Star State.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s office said the bus arrived at about 7:15 a.m. on Monday at Union Station.
FOX 11 in L.A. reported that the bus was carrying migrants, including 23 men, 20 women and 21 children, all from Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Russia and Venezuela.
‘The city has continued to work with city departments, the county and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year,’ said Zach Seidle, the city’s deputy mayor of communications and spokesperson for the mayor. ‘As we have before, when we became aware of the bus yesterday, we activated our plan.’
The bus arrived nearly a week after the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to pursue a lawsuit and criminal probe against Texas over its migrant bussing program.
Council members requested the city attorney’s office investigate whether Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has committed crimes through the program and whether the lawsuit is justified.
Abbott’s program has delivered a total of 435 migrants to L.A. since buses started arriving on June 14. In total, the program has sent more than 30,000 migrants to Democrat-led cities across the U.S., including New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
In a statement to Fox News Digital last Thursday, Abbott’s office highlighted L.A.’s status as a sanctuary city as a reason to send migrants there, adding that migrants on the buses sign a multi-language consent waiver that shows their destination.
‘The LA City Council members are complete hypocrites,’ Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in the statement. ‘In June, they unanimously voted to become a sanctuary city, welcoming migrants to the city. Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities like Los Angeles last year to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities.’
‘Instead of complaining about dealing with a fraction of the border crisis our small border towns deal with every day, the City Council should call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border – something the President continues failing to do,’ he added.
L.A. City Council members approved a motion on June 9 to formally establish the city as a sanctuary city.
Abbott has continued to orchestrate the trips because Texas’s border region is ‘overwhelmed’ with immigrants who cross the Mexican border illegally.
Anders Hagstrom of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.