Data obtained by NBC News seems to indicate that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did not send a single bus full of migrants out of the state in July, despite his vow at the Republican National Convention on July 17 to keep sending buses north until the border is “secure.”
In July 2023, Abbott sent 95 buses with 4,281 migrants to cities around the country, according to numbers from the Texas Division of Emergency Management obtained by NBC News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
This July, he sent zero.
The data covers the period from when the buses began on April 11, 2022, through Aug. 8, 2024, and confirms what NBC News reported exclusively last week: that the bus trips dropped sharply after President Joe Biden’s executive action curtailing asylum applications took effect in early June and then kept falling because there were not enough migrants to fill the buses.In January, Abbott sent 156 buses to Democratic-led cities out of state. The total dropped in February, then rose again in March and April when Texas sent more than 100 each month to Chicago, Denver and New York, according to the data.
By May, the totals were starting to decline, with 76 buses holding a little over 3,000 migrants.
In June, the decline accelerated. Before June 4, the day Biden’s action took effect, five buses departed.
On June 4, Abbott sent eight buses to Chicago, Denver and New York. After June 4, he dispatched just 15 more. At least one bus that headed north from Texas on June 11 may have been just half full, according to the data. The buses generally carried 50 passengers, but this one had 25.
By the end of July, migrant shelter operators in border cities were telling NBC News that there were not enough migrants to fill the buses, and officials in some Northern cities said they believed no more buses were arriving.
‘Those buses will continue to roll’
Republican National Convention delegates erupted in applause last month when Abbott doubled down on his commitment to send buses full of migrants to blue cities.
“We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country,” Abbott told the crowd. “Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.”
But in some cities, the newly obtained data confirms, the migrant buses had actually stopped before the new year.
The last bus to reach Washington, D.C., was in October, and the last in Philadelphia was in December.
The last bus from Texas to Los Angeles arrived in mid-January 2024.
A spokesman for Abbott acknowledged that there were now fewer migrants to bus out of state, but said that it was the governor’s actions in Texas that fueled the drop in migrants crossing the border. “Texas has decreased illegal crossings into the state by 85% thanks to our historic border mission,” said spokesman Andrew Maheris. “Fewer illegal crossings into Texas means there are fewer buses departing for sanctuary cities.”
A spokesperson for the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which has managed bus logistics in the past, said bus departures have fluctuated over time “due to the number of individuals processed and released by the federal government in overwhelmed border communities, which have an impact on passenger numbers.”
For Carlos Sanchez, a spokesperson for Hidalgo County on the Mexican border, the narrative of communities swamped by migrants was always overblown by politicians.
“It was never really the talk of the town,” he told NBC News. “It may have been the talk of the governor’s office or the talk of the nation, but this notion that we are being overrun is just not reflected locally.”
