(CNN) — Texas has bused nearly 9,000 asylum seekers to New York City and Washington in recent months, as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s effort to highlight his criticism of the immigration policies of the Joe Biden administration.
In a statement Friday, Abbott’s office said Texas has bused more than 7,400 immigrants to Washington since April and more than 1,500 immigrants to New York City since Aug. 5.
“The busing mission provides much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities,” the statement said. “Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps left by the Biden administration’s refusal to secure the border.”
A fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, Abbott began busing hundreds of willing immigrants to Washington earlier this year as an affront to the administration. Abbott’s office has said that “in order to board a bus or flight, a migrant must volunteer to be transported and show documentation from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”
New York City has seen a record number of immigrants this week and more buses are expected, a spokesperson for the mayor’s Office of Immigration told CNN on Saturday.
Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials have previously accused the Abbott administration of forcing asylum seekers to board buses bound for New York City and not coordinating with city officials to transfer people. Earlier this month, city officials said intake centers were already overwhelmed with more than 4,000 people since a surge that began in May.
A bus carrying migrants who crossed the border from Mexico into Texas arrives at the Port Authority station on Thursday.
“It’s unimaginable. You come to a country and on your first visit here, someone is kicking you out, like the governor of Texas is doing, and then trying to navigate this complex country to provide your services,” Adams said at an event. unrelated press earlier this month.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN Thursday that Abbott’s efforts to bus migrants to Washington and New York are “out of control” of the federal migrant processing system and criticized the governor for failing to coordinate with federal authorities.
Mayorkas said it is “problematic” when an official like Abbott works “unilaterally.”
“That lack of coordination creates problems in our very efficient processing,” Mayorkas told CNN in Eagle Pass while at the US-Mexico border on Thursday, adding that it is making DHS’s job more difficult.
Mayorkas criticized Abbott for not working with destination cities.
“These cities have certain capabilities,” he said. “They have infrastructure to serve the needs of migrants, and we need to calibrate the movement of people, according to their capacity and their efficiencies. And that is not being done.”
Mayorkas said his department reached out to Abbott to seek better coordination, but Abbott did not respond.
CNN’s Rosa Flores, Rosalina Nieves and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.