Another bus carrying asylum seekers arrived in downtown Los Angeles from a Texas border city early on Saturday, the second such transport in less than three weeks.
The bus, which arrived at about 12.40pm at Los Angeles’s Union Station from Brownsville, Texas, held 41 people including 11 children who were with their families, according to a statement from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (Chirla).
The busload of people were welcomed by a collective of faith and immigrants’ rights groups and transported to St Anthony’s Croatian Catholic church, where they were given water, food, clothing, medical checkups and initial legal immigration assistance.
The office of Los Angeles’ mayor, Karen Bass, was not formally notified but became aware of the bus on Friday, said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, in a statement.
The asylum seekers came from Cuba, Belize, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela. According to a statement from Chirla, most of those on the bus are seeking to reunify with family members or sponsors. Six of them need to fly to Las Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for Chirla.
Cabrera said the group “was less stressed and less chaotic than the previous time”, referring to the busload of people who arrived at the same major transit hub on 14 June. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, claimed responsibility for that move in a tweet that read: “Small Texas border towns remain overrun & overwhelmed because Biden refuses to secure the border”.
Abbott has not mentioned the latest bus – and an attempt to contact him was not immediately returned – but posted figures in a tweet on Saturday that claimed the Texas national guard and state troopers have “apprehended more than 386,000” asylum seekers. “While Biden ignores the border crisis, Texas is stepping up to fill the gaps he created,” Abbott said.
Bass tweeted: “Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect and dignity and will continue to do so.”
Bass said that after she took office last year, she directed city agencies to begin planning for a possible scenario in which LA “was on the receiving end of a despicable stunt that Republican governors have grown so fond of”.
“Chirla and our partners in Los Angeles are organized and ready to receive these asylum seekers when they get here,” said Angélica Salas, Chirla’s executive director, in a statement. “If Los Angeles is their last destination, we will ensure this is the place where they get a genuine and humane reception.”
Earlier in June, the state of Florida picked up three dozen migrants in Texas and sent them by private jet to California’s capital, catching shelters and aid workers in Sacramento by surprise. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, held Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, responsible for the flights of asylum seekers, which came in two waves, and appeared to threaten to file kidnapping charges after the first incident in which a group of migrants was dumped at a Sacramento church.
