Texas officials have spent over $221 million to transport tens of thousands of illegal aliens to Democrat-run cities far away from the Rio Grande.
A Public Information Act request by the Washington Examiner to the Texas Division of Emergency Management revealed that the money was paid out in over 750 payments to transportation companies since operations kicked off in 2022.
Taxpayers bore the most significant portion of the costs—99 percent. Private donors picked up the remaining one percent, which totaled $460,196.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s office estimated in August that Operation Lone Star had bused over 12,500 illegal aliens to Washington, D.C. since April 2022; 45,900 to New York City since August 2022; 36,900 to Chicago since August 2022; 3,400 to Philadelphia since November 2022; 19,200 to Denver since May 2023; and 1,500 to Los Angeles since June 2023.
Reactions to the strategy of busing illegal aliens into cities across the nation have been mixed, even from within the Republican Party.
“We should immediately pivot,” stated Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French on X in reaction to the news. “Let’s load them on buses and take them back across the border.”
Still, Abbott has defended the busing policy. He recently told a crowd in Arizona while campaigning for former President Donald Trump that he was merely giving back to the Biden-Harris administration what they have given Texas.
“When you saw 5,000 people a day crossing into a town like Eagle Pass, Texas, you could see that that was on your TV. You knew what was going on in America,” explained Abbott. “What Harris wanted to do was to silence the critics, and they could silence the critics by making this problem go invisible.”
He added, “They’re doing that daily, flying people across the border or through this [asylum application program], getting them to come to a port of entry, at which time they will put them on a bus and then transport them to some other place.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been a vocal opponent of Abbott’s busing policies, warning that the Big Apple cannot house more than 210,000 illegal aliens that have arrived from the southern border since 2022.
In April, the New York State Supreme Court ruled against Adams’ attempt to block Texas-based busing companies from transporting illegal aliens to New York City.
