PHILADELPHIA — From shortly before Thanksgiving until after the New Year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent nearly a thousand immigrants to Philadelphia aboard unscheduled, unannounced buses.
The last of 19 coaches pulled up outside 30th Street Station on Jan. 7.
And since then ... nothing.
What at first seemed a pause has become a full stop, one that's given local immigration advocates a chance to catch their breath, and raised questions over the ongoing impact of federal policies. It's also left many here wondering if a new rush of buses could start to arrive next month, when a pandemic-related immigration ban is scheduled to expire.
"As a city we're definitely in preparation," said Amy Eusebio, director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs. "We feel ready."
What's happening at the federal level is reaching into cities like Philadelphia, in unanticipated ways.
President Joe Biden took office promising to create a more humane immigration system, but in fact has continued some Trump-era policies, including what's known as Title 42. That WWII-era health law allows the government to expel people in the name of stopping communicable diseases.
The Trump administration used it to override asylum, a legal means to stay in the U.S. for those facing persecution in their homelands. The administration sent people who entered the southern border back to their home country or, more often, to Mexico.
The Biden administration continued the policy and defended it in court — and later opposed it in legal proceedings. Now the Centers for Disease Control says the COVID-19 pandemic no longer justifies the use of Title 42, and Biden plans to lift the restriction in May.
It's hard to know the impact, as people were expelled more than 2 million times under the policy amid the pandemic. But it might provoke a rush of new arrivals toward states like Texas, followed by the sending of more buses to Philadelphia from Del Rio, a border town located about 150 miles west of San Antonio.
City officials and their nonprofit partners, who met bus after bus, often in freezing, pre-dawn temperatures, aren't sure what to expect. The same volume of people? Fewer? More? But they say they're poised to quickly relaunch and recalibrate what was a safe and successful welcome effort.
"Those mechanics are still ready," said Peter Pedemonti, co-director of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, one of the organizations that played a central role in assisting newcomers.
When the first bus arrived on Nov. 16, bringing about 30 migrants to a side street near the train station, passengers were quickly checked for medical emergencies, then offered blankets, coats, and hot drinks.
Some were picked up by family members. Others boarded a waiting bus to be transferred to a city-run welcome center in North Philadelphia, where government workers and immigrant-assistance groups provided food, temporary housing, legal services, and logistical support.
During roughly seven weeks, 838 immigrants arrived here, according to city officials. Almost all moved on, connecting with family in surrounding states, while about 50 indicated a desire to stay in Philadelphia. About 18 people remain at the Welcome Center for now.
Today a small number of Immigrants continue to trickle into Philadelphia on their own, arriving by bus and plane, seeking to make better lives in this city or to travel from here to another, said Emilio Buitrago, a founder of Casa De Venezuela, whose volunteers work to help and direct those newcomers, as they did those sent from Texas.
"We get a call every day," Buitrago said.
It's the same for Clara Jerez, a pastoral associate at Aquinas Community Center of St. Thomas Aquinas in Point Breeze, who continues to work with a dozen immigrant families and individuals, connecting them to housing, services, and support networks.
"The case management is something that we need to continue doing, like people need to know where the laundromat is, how the banks work, health care," Jerez said. "Volunteers are on call all the time."
Philadelphia was targeted among so-called "sanctuary cities" including Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., as Abbott sent more than 16,000 migrants in 2022. Mayors in Washington and New York declared states of emergency due to the influx of people.
"Texas is taking unprecedented action to respond to President Biden's historic border crisis, including busing migrants to sanctuary cities like Philadelphia," said the governor's press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, citing predictions of 18,000 people a day appearing at the border with the end of Title 42. "Our border communities can't handle this influx, and Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities to provide relief."
The governor earlier said he acted to ease pressure on overwhelmed Texas border towns, though Mayor Jim Kenney and other advocates called it a cheap political stunt that hurt immigrant families.
The local impact was real, forcing Philadelphia officials and immigrant leaders to respond to every bus, whatever the day or hour, tiring them out, upending their schedules and diverting them from other work.
It started in a rush. And ended just as suddenly. Why the stop?
"The short answer is Biden," Pedemonti said.
Aside from Title 42, he noted, the president's policies have blocked people from entering the country at the southern border, including those seeking asylum. Hence there are likely fewer people for Abbott to bus north.
In January the president announced a huge expansion of what's called humanitarian parole, to allow Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans to legally enter the United States. It seemed a boon. But the system was available only to those who had a financial sponsor in this country, one who was willing and able to support them for two years. The system required immigrants to navigate an on-line app — it often balked — to make an appointment at a U.S. port of entry.
People fleeing violence in their homelands generally don't have those resources.
Biden was building on an October program that was designed to admit 24,000 Venezuelans while quickly expelling to Mexico anyone who crossed without permission. Many migrants said they were denied a chance to seek asylum.
Those policies have dramatically reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States. It's also created a bottleneck that's left thousands of people living in shelters or on the streets in Mexico. Authorities there are investigating a March 27 fire at an immigrant-detention center that killed 39 men in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
"The Democrats put the spin on it where people think they're doing something good, but actually they're doing something anti-immigrant," Pedemonti said. "They're pretending they're making it orderly, and really it's another way to turn people away."
The Biden administration has announced that as Title 42 expires, a new rule will take effect, one that presumes people who crossed the border without permission, or who did not seek protection in other countries on their way here, are ineligible for asylum. That's a dramatic reinterpretation of immigration law, which says people can seek protection no matter how they got here.
It's unclear how potential court challenges to that rule could effect its implementation.
The right to seek asylum sprang from the worldwide displacement of WWII and the horror of the Holocaust, enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and in the United States Refugee Act of 1980, which offers safety to people fleeing persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a particular social group.
All those sent to Philadelphia had permission to be in the United States, as they pursued claims in federal Immigration Court. All or almost all were seeking asylum.
Immigrants interviewed by The Inquirer said their two-day bus journey started with an offer of a free trip to Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia, made over a loudspeaker at a Texas border facility. Many had come to the United States from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Cuba.
The city's Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Office of Emergency Management had spent months preparing for arrivals, coordinating with community organizations including Juntos, HIAS Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, and Nationalities Service Center.
For now, Buitrago said, the roster of volunteers at Casa De Venezuela remains on standby. They'll rally the moment they're needed. In the meantime he regularly visits the welcome center to check on clothing donations and other supplies.
Everything there, he said, is stocked and ready.
