Texas Governor Greg Abbott did not send a single bus full of migrants out of the state in July, despite vowing at the Republican National Convention on July 17 to keep sending buses north until the border was “secure,” according to data obtained by NBC News.
In July 2023, Gov. Abbott sent 95 buses carrying 4,281 migrants to cities across the country, according to Texas Emergency Management Agency figures obtained by NBC News under the Freedom of Information Act.
This July, he sent nothing.
The data covers the period from April 11, 2022, when the buses began service, through Aug. 8, 2024, and confirms what NBC News reported exclusively last week: the number of buses serviced fell sharply after President Joe Biden’s executive order restricting asylum applications went into effect in early June, and continued to decline after that because there just weren’t enough migrants to fill the buses.
In January, Governor Abbott sent 156 buses to Democratic-led cities outside the state. That total dropped in February but increased again in March and April, with Texas sending more than 100 buses each month to Chicago, Denver and New York, according to the data.
By May, the total numbers had begun to drop, to just over 3,000 migrants on 76 buses.
The decline accelerated in June. By June 4, when Biden’s measures took effect, five buses had departed.
On June 4, Governor Abbott sent eight buses to Chicago, Denver, and New York. Since then, he has sent just 15 more. The data shows that at least one bus traveling north from Texas on June 11 may have been only half full; the bus typically carries 50 passengers, but this one had 25.
By the end of July, operators of migrant shelters in border cities told NBC News there weren’t enough migrants to fill buses, and officials in several northern cities said they didn’t think any more buses would arrive.
“The buses will continue to run.”
Last month, delegates to the Republican National Convention applauded when Abbott again doubled down on his pledge to send buses full of immigrants to Democratic cities.
“We continue to bus migrants to sanctuary cities across the country,” Governor Abbott told the crowd. “These buses will continue to run until the border is finally secure.”
But newly available data confirms that migrant buses in some cities had indeed stopped operating before the new year.
The last bus to arrive in Washington DC was in October, and the last to arrive in Philadelphia in December.
The last bus from Texas to Los Angeles arrived in mid-January 2024.
A spokesman for Governor Abbott acknowledged that the number of migrants being bused out of the state has decreased, but said it was the Texas governor’s actions that have led to the drop in migrants crossing the border.
“Thanks to historic border enforcement efforts, Texas has reduced illegal crossings into our state by 85 percent,” spokesman Andrew Maheris said. “Fewer illegal crossings into Texas means fewer buses leaving for sanctuary cities.”
A spokesman for the Texas Emergency Management Agency, which has been managing the logistics for the buses thus far, said bus departure times “variegate over time as the number of people the federal government is processing and releasing in overcrowded border areas impacts ridership.”
For Carlos Sanchez, a spokesman for Hidalgo County on the Mexican border, stories of communities being overwhelmed by migrants have always been exaggerated by politicians.
“It was never talked about around town,” he told NBC News. “It may have been talked about in the governor’s office or around the country, but the idea that we’re overwhelmed has not been reflected locally.”
