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New York has sued 17 bus companies for bringing thousands of migrants to the city from the Mexican border at the behest of Texas governor Greg Abbott, in a scheme that it says has caused a housing and budget crisis.
In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, the office of New York mayor Eric Adams said it was seeking $708mn in compensation from the companies — a sum its lawyers said reflected the cost of accommodating the 33,600 asylum seekers bussed to New York over the past 20 months alone.
The bus companies had earned millions of dollars in revenue by assisting Abbott, the filing claimed, violating a New York law that requires those who bring “a needy person from out of state” to “convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense”.
Adams’ lawyers further alleged the companies were acting in “bad faith” and with “evil intent”, charging Texas $1,650 per person for their services, while a regular one-way bus ticket to New York City would normally cost just over $290.
“New York City has and will continue to do our part in the asylum seeker crisis,” Adams wrote on X. “But we can’t bear the costs alone — and we won’t let those complicit in [governor Abbott’s] scheme get away with violating our state laws.”
He added: “We’ll see you in court.”
The lawsuit comes amid soaring tensions over migration and the US-Mexico border, where a record number of people from around the world have attempted to cross. It has become a political headache for the Joe Biden administration, which Republicans have blamed for failing to stop the flow of asylum seekers. It has also led to tensions between Republican- and Democratic-led states about what to do with those who have arrived in the country.
In April 2022, Abbott, a Republican and supporter of former president Donald Trump, unveiled a plan to bus migrants to more liberal cities in the north in order to “relieve [Texas’s] overwhelmed border towns”. The state has since spent almost $90mn on the scheme, which has overwhelmed New York’s already creaking public services.
By December of last year, the city had spent $3.5bn on providing shelter and services for more than 164,500 arrivals — many of whom voluntarily travelled to New York in search of employment opportunities or to link up with family members.
After Adams’ administration issued an order mandating bus operators to alert the city 32 hours before offloading migrants, some coaches have resorted to dropping passengers off at Secaucus Junction in New Jersey — a short train ride from Manhattan.
Earlier on Thursday, Abbott told Fox News that Texas will continue to “bus and fly migrants to New York, Chicago and other places like that” until the Biden administration does more to secure the US’s southern border and reinstates Trump’s tough immigration policies.
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