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Texas Governor Greg Abbott has defied demands from New York Mayor Eric Adams over when migrants can arrive in the city, with the last busload to be delivered just as the Times Square ball drops on the eve of New Year.
Last week, Adams issued an executive order that buses could only arrive at the Port Authority to drop off immigrants between 8:30 a.m. and 12 p.m. Monday through Friday, unless given permission to do so. otherwise.
Despite this, a bus heading to the Big Apple packed with around 50 asylum seekers left El Paso, Texas, around 11am on Saturday morning.
The bus, whose passengers include women and children, is scheduled to arrive in Gotham on Sunday night, shortly before midnight, the charter driver told DailyMail.com.
“We have to get back on the road at midnight,” he said. “Everyone will celebrate the New Year and we will return.”
Immigrants in New York City are seen being bussed to a shelter, after arriving from Texas.
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, held a joint news conference Wednesday with the mayors of Chicago and Denver, who are also struggling to address the surge in migrant arrivals.
Texas officials did not confirm whether they had received permission to drop off migrants in New York outside of the time Adams decreed.
State officials later reprimanded the two-man driving team for speaking to DailyMail.com.
When asked about Adams’ executive order, a Venezuelan woman heading to New York on the bus from Texas said, “We are not all the same.” Maybe some immigrants who are already there did things they shouldn’t have done.
‘Let’s go there to work. “We just need a chance,” he added.
The woman, who did not want to be identified but said she was traveling with her 11-year-old daughter, said they entered the United States through El Paso on Christmas Day.
They were excited to make New York their final destination after leaving Venezuela almost two months ago.
“Work, all we want is work,” chimed in a migrant man standing next to the mother and daughter.
Immigrants are seen arriving in Chicago, on a bus from Texas
Chicago has spent $138 million on the crisis that is expected to worsen as temperatures drop as winter progresses.
El Paso city officials have been working with state officials to bus more than 17,000 immigrants out of the West Texas city.
In a move similar to New York, Chicago has also cracked down on how and when buses from Texas can drop off immigrants.
Another bus heading to Denver left before noon and three buses were waiting to be filled.
That city’s mayor and suburban Chicago elected officials passed local ordinances that require Texas to report to Illinois officials and also regulate where immigrants can be dropped off, as this often ties up local resources.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott chartered a private plane for about 120 migrants earlier this month to avoid Chicago roadblocks, and has said more planes are coming.
In border cities like El Paso, where migrants never stop showing up to surrender to federal authorities, busing people to their final destination is crucial to prevent local resources from collapsing.
Migrant shelters in West Texas are full and a vacant intermediate shelter is now housing migrants.
In besieged Eagle Pass, more than 22,000 immigrants arrived in their small town in just one week, the Border Patrol confirmed.
The city’s population is only 28,000.
“Texas communities like Eagle Pass and El Paso should not have to bear the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration caused by President Biden’s reckless open border policies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott previously said.
It comes as around 1,300 migrants have been passing through the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua since Christmas Day.
A second large wave could reach the border in several weeks, when a massive caravan, 6,000 to 8,000 people, currently arrives in southern Mexico.
El Paso, which spent most of last year as the epicenter of the border crisis, has three larger processing centers that were built in the last 12 months specifically to handle surges of migrants at the border.
Although the city is seeing about 1,000 migrant encounters a day — far fewer than in the current hot spots of Lukeville, Arizona, or Eagle Pass, Texas, where ten times that many cross — officials here have the ability to quickly escalate their response. if that number reaches its maximum point.