Sept. 10 (UPI) — A group of House Democrats has called for $50 million in funding to house and feed migrants bused to northern cities from Arizona and Texas in recent months.
The lawmakers wrote in a letter Friday that Congress should provide the funds as part of the 2023 budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program.
The letter was signed by 23 lawmakers, led by Reps. Jesús García of Illinois and Adriano Espaillat of New York, and was sent to Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard and Chuck Fleischmann of the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee.
“Since mid-April, the governors of Texas and Arizona have exploited and harmed approximately 10,000 vulnerable people fleeing desperate and dangerous situations in their home countries for political gain by busing them to D.C., New York City and Chicago,” the letter reads.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, first started sending migrants to Washington, D.C., in April and has since sent scores of migrants to other Democrat-run cities leading for an increase in calls of funding from the northeast and midwest.
“In a cynical political stunt that has exploited both vulnerable migrants and D.C., the governors of Texas and Arizona have bused thousands of migrants to D.C., Chicago, and New York City in the last several months,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Washington, D.C., said in a news release.
Texas has spent around $12 million on its program to bus migrants out of Texas, according to the El Paso Times. Dubbed Operation Lone Star, the program has sent 9,200 migrants since it began in April at a cost of about $1,300 per migrant.
