Back in July, during the Republican National Convention, Texas governor Greg Abbott vowed to continue busing immigrants north as part of his controversial Operation Lone Star. But as the numbers of border-crossing immigrants continues to plummet, his administration might just be running out of migrants to send to Democratic-led cities.
The situation has led Chicago officials to significantly scale back their previous concerns regarding the amount of migrants arriving to the city this week during the Democratic National Convention, which kicks off on Monday. While previous estimates placed the number of arrivals around 25,000, the number today sits below a thousand people, Fox News reported.
The original tally was estimated by Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago deputy mayor for immigration. She did however acknowledge the new scenario last week by telling the Chicago Tribune that the city does "not have any credible intel that there will be a large surge in terms of buses coming from Texas."
Her statements were supported by Andre Gordillo, director of migrant assistance group New Vecinos Program, who told Fox News the city "realistically expects 750-1,000 new arrivals" across the week.
The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services attributed the decline in migrant arrivals to President Joe Biden's recent executive order, which imposed stricter conditions for asylum-seekers if daily border crossings exceeded 2,500 people.
Texas officials, however, credit their own border security measures under Operation Lone Star for the reduced number of migrants. According to News Nation Now, Abbott's spokesman, Andrew Mahaleris, highlighted that illegal border crossings have decreased by 85% thanks to "our historic border mission" referring to the aforementioned Operation Lone Star funded by over $11 billion in taxpayer money.
Despite the reduced migrant traffic, Mahaleris indicated that Texas has not ruled out sending more migrants to sanctuary cities in the future:
"Until the Biden-Harris Administration steps up and does their job to secure the border, Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities like Chicago to help our local partners respond to this border crisis."
Currently, Chicago's migrant shelter population stands at 5,592, with the city operating 17 shelters and maintaining several thousand vacant beds. Although no migrant buses have arrived in Chicago since December 2023, city officials remain prepared to activate additional emergency shelters if needed.
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