Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed to continue busing immigrants to Democratic-led cities in the northern part of the country during the Republican National Convention. "Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border," he said at the event in Milwaukee in mid-July.
However, according to data obtained by NBC News, the amount of migrants reaching the state has decreased so much over the past months that no buses were sent during July. The figure compares to the 4,281 people sent in 95 buses on the same month of 2023, as shown in data from the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
Abbott started busing migrants to sanctuary cities in 2022 as part of Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion program designed to address the migrant surge in Texas.
Numbers have been dropping steadily since the beginning of the year and did so even more after the Biden administration implemented an executive order aimed at further cracking down on unlawful immigration.
In January, the outlet detailed, the Abbott administration sent 156 buses out of state. It dropped in February but went back up in March and April, with authorities sending over 100 buses each month. Figures then began to decline in May (76 buses) and dropped to less than 30 in June. The last one departed the state on June 11 with 25 passengers, half of its capacity.
The drop coincides with Biden's executive action in June which temporarily shut down the southern border when daily migrant crossings between legal ports of entry exceed 2,500, with the border reopening when the number falls below 1,500.
CBP reported 56,408 migrant encounters between ports of entry in July, an 80% drop from last December in which Illegal crossings surged to their highest-ever level.
A spokesman for Abbott acknowledged that there were now fewer migrants to bus out of state, but said that it was the governor's actions in Texas that fueled the drop in migrants crossing the border. A local official said this week that the number of illegal crossings into the United States through the Texas-Mexico border is down 87% from its peak.
Mike Banks, Special Advisor on Border Matters under Gov. Greg Abbott said that, as the number of encounters has slowed down, the federal government has opted to temporarily move agents out of Texas to other ports of entry in Arizona, California and New Mexico.
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