Serious people should have a lot of questions about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing asylum seekers to New York, the most serious of which concern whether he and other governors sending migrants here, Chicago, D.C., Martha’s Vineyard and elsewhere are breaking the law by misleading people and transferring them under false pretenses.
However, unless and until a court or the feds steps in, buses are going to keep arriving at Port Authority, carrying thousands of people who have been sent on their way in bad faith, with no coordination with the mayor’s office or local nonprofits. It would be very easy for Abbott to open lines of communication with Mayor Eric Adams, but he won’t do that because the sole point is scoring political points.
Unfortunately, by scrambling to accommodate migrants in our overburdened shelter system and publicly complaining about the strain the inflow is putting on our right-to-shelter city, the city has yet to effectively respond to Abbott’s cynical, immoral stunt. The city should not violate the decades-old settlement that requires anyone without a place to stay to have the option of city-provided shelter, nor should it abandon a commitment to helping these new arrivals.
