NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Another 100 migrants arrived in Manhattan by bus Thursday as Texas officials confirmed they’ve been barcoding some of them for the 1,700-mile journey.
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City Comptroller Brad Lander went to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown to greet the new arrivals, who arrived on two buses. He said many had children with them and came with “nothing but the clothes on their backs.”
Lander said that by some accounts, the asylum seekers were intimidated into boarding the buses from Texas as a heated political feud between Gov. Greg Abbott and Mayor Eric Adams gets national news coverage.
“This is them bullying people. It’s clear some people have been lied to and don’t even want to come to New York,” Lander said.
New York City has been scrambling for weeks to accommodate the new arrivals, more than 7,000 of whom have been taken into the city shelter system so far this summer.
Lander recently approved emergency procurements for city agencies as they try to set up a navigation site and space to house and service the immigrants. The city has also asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for emergency housing and service funds.
“The city has the capacity to rapidly scale up and contract with nonprofits and provide shelter and services, but the federal government is who should be paying for it,” Lander said.
The comptroller said Abbott is engaged in “shameful politics” as he buses thousands of migrants to New York and Washington, D.C., claiming Texas is “overwhelmed.”
“He doesn’t seem to have any shame,” Lander said of the Republican governor, who is up for reelection this year.
Lander also censured Abbott on Twitter Thursday, writing that the governor “can debase himself, intimidate refugee families and try to score anti-woke points by being cruel. But we’ll never let him destroy what make our city and country welcoming and free.”
Lander couldn’t confirm reports that some of the bus passengers were wearing tracking wristbands with barcodes or whether bus operators had to sign nondisclosure agreements.
Dozens of migrants were seen wearing the wristbands in an apparent effort to keep track of them, according to multiple witness accounts on Wednesday, when 237 asylum seekers arrived by bus—the most in a single day since the busing began earlier this summer.
In a statement to WCBS-TV, Manuel Castro, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said, “Gov. Abbott is bar-coding people and treating them as less than human, as if they were cattle.”
“I was incredibly shocked when I saw children with bracelets and barcodes and security personnel treating them as less than human beings,” Castro said.
The barcoded wristbands were apparently put on the migrants in Texas and then cut off by security workers hired by Texas as they disembarked buses at Port Authority.
“It appears to us that asylum seekers are being asked to wear these bracelets with these barcodes to intimidate them, to scare them into remaining on these buses until they arrive in New York City,” Castro said.
A spokesperson for Abbott, Renae Eze, said the bracelets “ensure accurate and safe travel for people to their final destinations.”
Eze said the bracelets “hold each migrants’ information and the voluntary consent waivers they sign upon boarding that they agree on the destination.”
“Mayor Adams and his administration need to stop with the baseless lies and fearmongering,” she said. “These bracelets are standard protocol for voluntary transport by the Texas Division of Emergency Management and have been used during times of natural disasters like hurricanes when needing to transport people to safety...Instead of spreading falsehoods and complaining about a few hundred migrants being bused to his sanctuary city, Mayor Adams should call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border -- something the president continues failing to do.”
Abbott’s anti-immigration policies have taken center stage in his 2022 gubernatorial re-election campaign, and his ongoing practice of busing migrants to liberal cities like New York and Washington has captured national headlines.
The political feud between Abbott and Mayor Eric Adams continued to escalate Wednesday after the governor penned an op-ed in the New York Post attacking the mayor as “on a publicity campaign fueled by outright lies and misinformation intended to distract from his hesitancy to provide the services and support he self-righteously touted on the campaign trail.”
“Worst of all is Adams’ hypocrisy,” Abbott wrote. “He now complains that he and New York City are overwhelmed by migrants to such an extent that he demands federal help and discourages Texas from sending more buses to his city.”
Adams’ office told 1010 WINS that the city has welcomed migrants with “open arms” while Abbott uses them as “political pawns.”
“Someone get this man a dictionary,” the mayor said. “‘Hypocrisy’ is claiming you love America and then decrying the words on the Statue of Liberty.”
“To be clear, Mayor Adams and New York City will continue to welcome asylum seekers with open arms,” City Hall continued. “These individuals and families have been through hell, and they deserve more than being used as political pawns by a governor who cares about nothing more than reelection. Governor Abbott should actually focus on the failures he has burdened Texans with before spending time writing op-eds in New York papers.”
City officials have accused Texas of packing migrants onto buses without telling them where they’re going, separating them from support networks and leaving them homeless at their destination. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine estimated as many as 40% of the bused migrants have family or close relations in other parts of the country but were sent to New York instead of having the option to stay with their support network.
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