The state of Texas has spent more than $221 million in taxpayer funds to transport nearly 120,000 migrants to six “sanctuary” cities far north of the southern border , the Washington Examiner has learned.
A public information request filed to the Texas Division of Emergency Management showed that the state made more than 750 payments totaling $221,705,637 to transportation companies since the start of operations in April 2022 and August 2024.
Nearly all of the costs were picked up by the state's 30 million residents, with a small portion, $460,196 , donated from outside parties. Less than 1% of the $221 million was picked up by nontaxpayers.
The costs are part of the billions of dollars that the state has incurred while boosting border security as a record-high number of illegal immigrants have been arrested at the Mexico border since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
The nearly 120,000 migrants bused north, on a voluntary basis, is a small number of the more than 5.3 million illegal immigrants who crossed the southern border have been allowed to remain in the United States, according to a House Judiciary Committee report first obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Although Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has maintained that it was intended to deter illegal immigration into Texas communities and relieve the high demand at public airports and bus stops where illegal immigrants released at the border have sought transportation to destinations nationwide, Democrats have protested the huge expenditures to move immigrants out of border towns.
New York City's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who was on the receiving end as Texas buses dropped off 45,900 migrants in Manhattan, accused Abbott of using people as political pawns.
“While the Adams administration has saved taxpayers over $2 billion in costs related to the migrant crisis, Governor Abbott has wasted over $220 million on an ill-conceived policy that has failed to deliver meaningful results for either taxpayers or migrants," said Adams deputy press secretary Liz Garcia in an email Wednesday.
Matt Woking, vice president of communications at Republican consulting firm Axiom Strategies, said Abbott still came out on top in the end despite the $221 million bill.
"This effort likely saved lives in Texas, defrayed costs for taxpayers in the state, and yielded a bonanza of earned media coverage across the country regarding the burdens created by mass illegal immigration," Wolking wrote in a text message.
"The return on investment was clearly a success. Texas saved money it would have had to pay for public safety, public education, the justice system, and welfare, and shifted those costs to sanctuary cities, exposing liberals' hypocrisy on this issue in the process," Wolking said. "Republicans should continue to give Democrat officials more of what they claim to want: the opportunity to welcome, feed, clothe, house, and financially support unlimited numbers of noncitizens. It's a powerful tactic to galvanize support for securing the border."
In April 2022, Abbott announced that the state would provide state-funded bus rides to Washington for migrants who had illegally crossed the southern border into Texas, been arrested by federal Border Patrol agents, and allowed to remain in the U.S. through immigration court proceedings.
“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hoards of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington, D.C.,” Abbott said during a press conference at the time.
“We are sending them to the United States’s capital, where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border,” said Abbott, adding that people would be dropped off at the “steps of the United States Capitol.”
On certain days that year, the buses bypassed the Capitol and dropped off migrants outside Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence, including on Christmas Eve .
In 2022, Abbott also announced bus routes to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles.
New York City has been inundated with more than 210,000 migrants arriving from the southern border since 2022, including the 45,900 transported by Texas.
Garcia said Abbott's office did not warn them or provide notification ahead of bus drop-offs, leaving the city in a predicament every time buses pulled into Manhattan.
Last year, New York City sued to stop buses from driving migrants from Texas, but the lawsuit was shot down in court this summer. In the nine months since the lawsuit was filed, Texas dramatically curtailed buses to the Big Apple.
At the same time, the city chose to impose caps on how long migrants could remain in homeless shelters, a move that some Democrats said contradicted its right-to-shelter law.
"Thanks to our 30- and 60-day policies — and intensified casework — approximately 70 percent of the migrants that have come through our care have already taken the next steps in their journeys, and the population in our shelter system, and the migrant population overall, continue to dip as a result of the executive action Mayor Adams took last winter against Governor Abbott’s scheme to transport tens of thousands of migrants to other cities," said Garcia.
As far back as October 2023, Texas stopped sending buses carrying migrants north, the Washington Examiner was first to report in August. The bus runs to Washington stopped 11 months ago, while those to Philadelphia stopped in December 2023 and Los Angeles in January.
A grand total of 119,700 migrants were transported to the six cities since the operation stopped in June this year.
When asked about the end to busing, Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said illegal border crossings into Texas from Mexico had declined substantially.
Since the spring, the number of illegal immigrants arrested at the southern border has declined closer to historic norms, lessening the pressure on public transportation in Texas.
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Any return to busing will depend on what illegal immigration at the southern border looks like ahead of the November election and in the transition period before January, when arrests have historically ticked up.
Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment.
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