This Thursday morning, Kamala Harris somehow received a gift. Several dozen migrants were dropped off a few meters from the residence of the American vice-president, in particular in charge of immigration issues at the White House. Two buses carried this surprise package, carefully wrapped by the governor of Texas, the powerful and very conservative Greg Abbott. A very ordinary postal exchange, except that humans take the place of goods.
For months in the United States, local Republican officials, such as Greg Abbott, or Ron de Santis, the governor of Florida, have transported migrants in buses, or planes, to the Democratic strongholds of the country. More than ten thousand foreign people have already been victims of this chess game, where the pawns are human. An extreme way to denounce the policy of President Joe Biden, whom they accuse of having transformed the border with Mexico into a sieve.
And a radical way to talk about oneself and immigration before the mid-term elections in November. “Vice President Harris claims our border is ‘safe’ and denies there is a crisis. We are sending migrants to her backyard to urge the Biden administration to do its job…” Besides Washington , New York is also the ideal destination for these migrants who can take advantage of all the reception services of a sanctuary city”, quipped Greg Abbott on Twitter, candidate for his re-election. His border state with Mexico faces a daily mass immigration.
One-upmanship as the mid-terms approach
His friend Ron de Santis, considered a rival of Trump, meanwhile let it be known through his teams that the fifty or so migrants mysteriously dispatched by plane on Wednesday to the island of the beautiful Democratic world, Martha’s Vineyard, were of his doing. “As soon as we bring even a small fraction of what the border towns have to endure every day to their doorstep, they are furious,” he said. Children were present in these planes.
Methods that scandalized Joe Biden. “It’s wrong what they are doing. It’s anti-American. It’s irresponsible (…) Republicans are playing political games with human beings, using them as pawns”, a- he blasted Thursday night at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala. “They’re kids. They’re moms. They were fleeing communism. And what did Governors DeSantis and Abbott do to them? They used them as political pawns, treating them like cattle,” the spokeswoman said. the executive, Karine Jean-Pierre.
Far from being a kind of Republican crackdown, the operation was supported by some American conservatives who are doing everything not to lose their majority in Congress, and illustrates the polarization of opinion in the United States. Transporting these migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington “was a necessity”, commented Andy Biggs, Republican representative of Arizona, a state whose governor also sends buses of migrants. “Exploiting vulnerable people as part of a political coup is outrageous and cruel,” said Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, where the island of Martha’s Vineyard is located. Some Democrats have called the act of human trafficking.
Despite local mobilization to assist new arrivals, the island “is not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation and state officials have developed a plan for a comprehensive humanitarian response,” a government service statement said. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. In the meantime, these people, mainly Venezuelans, have been received at a military base, and promised not to separate the families. Washington or New York, this political ping-pong is not without consequence. Many migrants report “psychological scars” caused by such treatment.