Abbott defends dropping migrants at vice president's home: 'The White House is full of a bunch of hypocrites'

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday issued a sharp rebuke to the Biden administration over criticism of Abbott's recent decision to bus undocumented migrants to Washington D.C and strand them at Vice President Kamala Harris' residence in dangerously low temperatures on Christmas Eve.

"The White House is full of a bunch of hypocrites, led by the Hypocrite-in-Chief who has been flying planeloads of migrants across the country and oftentimes in the cover of night," the governor's office said in a statement to KHOU, after Biden spokesperson Abdullah Hasan lambasted Abbott's move as a "cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt."

"These migrants willingly chose to go to Washington, D.C., having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agreed on the destination," Abbott's office continued. "They were processed and released by the federal government, who are dumping them at historic levels in Texas border towns like El Paso, which recently declared a state of emergency because of the Biden-made crisis."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This summer, undocumented migrants who had entered the United States through Texas were flown to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, after signing consent forms allegedly under false pretenses. Abbott has sent busloads of undocumented migrants to Harris' residence before — part of his administration's policy of using asylum seekers as a means for unflattering optics for and political leverage against Democratic states — although the decision to do so on Christmas Eve during sub-freezing temperatures has intensified criticism against his office.

"You cannot tell me that you respect human life and then carry out actions like this when you are using people as political pawns," volunteer Claudia Tristàn of the Migrants Solidarity Mutual Aid Network told KHOU.

"We had people who were just in T-shirts, no long sleeves, no jackets," Tristàn, who was on site to welcome the busload to D.C., continued. "We even had some migrants that didn't even have shoes on them so it really was a horrific night for these people to just be dumped on the side of the road."