The busing of migrants from border states to blue cities appears to have been a turning point for public opinion on immigration, eventually pressuring Democrats to pivot to the right on the issue.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent more than 102,000 migrants to cities throughout the U.S. in the two years after the program began in April 2022, and at the Republican National Convention in July he pledged: ‘Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.’
But he did not send a single migrant bus out of the state in July 2024, with reports indicating there were not enough migrants to send.
Border encounters have decreased considerably this summer from the historic highs of recent years, following a push from the Biden administration to restrict asylum. Joe Biden campaigned on dismantling Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions, and the change in his tone on the issue has coincided with a pivot throughout the Democratic Party toward more restrictive immigration policy, in part because of Abbott’s busing program.
Migrant-busing exploited an imbalance in American immigration politics. Illegal border crossings have the most immediate and noticeable impact on small, low-income border towns. Places such as Del Rio, Texas, see an influx of migrants equal to 14 times their entire population size on an annual basis. Meanwhile, large and wealthy urban areas far from the border advertise themselves as sanctuary cities despite receiving proportionally few migrants. Upon receiving a sudden influx of migrants, these cities’ Democratic mayors and their left-leaning constituents quickly changed their tune.
New York Mayor Eric Adams said in late 2023 that illegal immigration would ‘destroy New York City’, a statement with which 58% of New Yorkers, including 46% of Democrats, agreed in a subsequent poll. Locals told the New York Times that the illegal immigrant surge was ‘unacceptable’ and ‘a disgrace’. The Democratic mayors of Chicago and Denver joined Adams in calling for Biden to declare a federal emergency over the migrant crisis late last year.
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