Texas Gov. Greg Abbott invites the public to help pay for migrants’ bus rides to Washington, D.C.

AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is inviting individuals to assist the state pay for busing migrants from border cities to Washington, D.C., and different out-of-state areas.

Abbott has positioned a brand new donations web page on his workplace’s web site.

He promoted it over the weekend throughout an look on Fox Information.

The Republican governor has defended his current use of state funds to constitution buses for migrants as a method to ship “a transparent message” to President Joe Biden that he’s failing to safe the nation’s southern border.

Final summer time, Abbott started crowdsourcing Texas’ effort to finish former President Donald Trump’s unfinished border wall. To date, personal donations have generated $55.3 million, an quantity equal to solely about 5% of the $1 billion the governor and state lawmakers authorised final yr for a border barrier.

On Monday, Abbott spokesmen didn’t reply to inquiries about how a lot has been raised from personal donations for the bus rides, and from what number of donors.

Abbott’s web site has a “Border Disaster Replace” web page that features a button, “Donate to the Border Transportation Funding.”

Although the net web page says donations “as of April 13″ are “TBD,” it’s unclear when the solicitation started.

In his April 6 announcement of the bus rides and truck inspections on worldwide bridges alongside the Texas-Mexico border, and his order for the Texas Division of Emergency Administration to safe the constitution buses, Abbott didn’t point out personal fundraising.

On Sunday, although, Abbott mentioned that as quickly as he introduced the bus-ride effort, his workplace’s “cellphone began ringing off the hook [with] individuals wanting to assist.”

Showing on Fox Information, Abbott twice repeated the net handle for individuals curious about donating.

“You’ll be able to contribute to us busing these migrants to Washington, D.C., and make the Biden administration cope with it themselves,” he advised host Maria Bartiromo.

Abbott recounted how native leaders in South Texas cities equivalent to Del Rio and Uvalde had advised him they had been being overwhelmed by the migrants being launched by the federal Division of Homeland Safety.

“They had been asking for assist,” the governor recalled. “They usually had been speaking about themselves busing these migrants as much as San Antonio. And I mentioned, ‘I’ve acquired a greater concept. Let’s simply bus all of them the way in which to Washington, D.C.’ ”

Between April 13 and Friday, Texas despatched 10 buses to Washington, D.C. Participation is voluntary. “The migrants have been from the international locations of Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Congo, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela,” Abbott’s workplace mentioned in a launch Friday.

On Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures, Abbott mentioned Border Patrol has stopped releasing as many migrants into the Texas communities that it beforehand “overloaded,” maybe to undercut Abbott’s busing effort.

Whereas the governor referred to as {that a} “short-term” profit, he continued to warn of a flood of migrants subsequent month, if the Biden administration proceeds with a plan to raise Trump’s Title 42 public well being order, below which asylum seekers had been rapidly turned away.

“Maria, with the sheer variety of individuals coming throughout the border starting in a month, we’ll proceed these bus routes to Washington, D.C.,” the governor mentioned.

Abbott, who’s searching for a 3rd time period this yr, has accused Biden of igniting a surge of migrants by unwisely reversing Trump’s immigration insurance policies.

As Abbott defined on a different Fox News program on Friday, “If Biden won’t come to the border, we’re sending the border to Biden and his administration to allow them to start to grapple with the challenges that we’re coping with.”