A group of 41 migrants who recently entered the U.S. arrived in Denver on Thursday in a bus chartered by the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) at the direction of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Unlike thousands of migrants who have arrived in the city since late December by their own means, this was the first arrival coordinated by another state government, according to Denver city officials.
It is not the first time the Republican governor has chartered buses for migrants. Since 2022, Abbott sent buses Texas to Washington, D.C., New York City , Chicago and Philadelphia. It is unclear what the migrants bused to Denver were told by Texas officials would happen upon arriving, but a TDEM spokesperson said the migrants traveled here voluntarily.
Their arrival comes days after Denver saw an uptick in daily arrivals that led to the city once again activating its emergency operations center like it did late last year.
The recent increase in arrivals was likely due to a mix of spring weather and the pending expiration of Title 42, the Trump-era COVID policy that allowed federal immigration officers to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico before applying for asylum.
Some predicted that the expiring policy would lead to an unsustainable number of border crossings, but instead the opposite has happened. Border agents have reported a 60% drop in apprehensions along the border as well as a sharp decrease in unauthorized crossings, CBS News reports.
While arrival numbers in Denver reached 378 people the day before Title 42 expired on May 11, numbers have dropped off in recent days. On Wednesday, 109 people arrived in the city.
Before the uptick of people in May, arrival numbers were in the single- and double-digits since February (Denver first mobilized its emergency operations when hundreds arrived in December and January). Still, Denver continues to shelter 146 people in city facilities and more than 1,000 people in shelters run by nonprofits and other city partners.
While some people are choosing to stay in Denver, many are just passing through on their way to other cities where people have family and friends.
Denver officials said Texas officials gave the city about 24-hours notice. City officials do not know if more buses are coming.
In response to Denverite's question about whether more buses were on the way or if migrants had a choice in destination, the Texas Division of Emergency Management sent the following statement:
"At the Governor's direction, our border bus missions continue with additional buses leaving overwhelmed Texas border communities daily. Prior to boarding the state-sponsored buses, each migrant signs a voluntary consent to travel waiver indicating their final destination on the bus is either New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, or Denver."
Why Abbott chose this moment, with arrival numbers and border crossings dropping, is also unclear.
"Until the President and his Administration step up and fulfill their constitutional duty to secure the border, the State of Texas will continue busing migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities like Denver to provide much-needed relief to our small border towns," Abbott wrote in a statement he tweeted Thursday.
Mayor Michael Hancock called Abbott's chartered bus "political theater."
"What is happening at the border, and what is showing up at the doorsteps of cities across the country, is a humanitarian crisis," Hancock wrote in a statement Thursday. "What none of us need is more political theater and partisan gamesmanship pitting jurisdictions against each other and exacerbating this situation instead of advocating for real solutions to this challenge. If Gov. Abbott thinks he's going to win over allies to his cause here in Denver with this latest stunt, he's going to be sorely mistaken. And we're more than happy to send him the bill for any additional support we have to provide now because of his failure at managing his own state."
Cities across the country have responded to migrant arrivals, laying bare political conflicts over U.S. immigration policy.
Denver and other Democrat-led cities have promised to shelter people as a way of pushing back against anti-immigration sentiment from Republicans.
Democratic leaders have criticized the buses as political stunts using real people's lives -- some of the buses have arrived in Washington D.C. at Vice President Kamala Harris' residence. And in the fall of 2022, migrants said they were "tricked" into boarding flights sent by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Mass. The migrants said they were promised jobs and resources, but Mass. officials did not know the planes were coming.
Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Hancock has called for more federal dollars to support cities' response efforts and for Congress to pass immigration reform.
"Congress and the federal government are failing to do their jobs," Hancock said at a press conference last week. "Congress needs to stop playing politics with this issue and pass legislation to fix these challenges."
