The governor of Texas has begun chartering planes to fly migrants from his state to Chicago, ramping up his campaign to draw attention to the border crisis.
Greg Abbott has previously bussed tens of thousands of migrants to Chicago and other cities, trying to make the Democrat rules of their cities and states reckon with the crisis confronting his state.
On Tuesday, the first plane took off from El Paso, landing in Chicago at 7:51pm with 91 migrants on board.
Two people disembarked and fled, WTTW News reported, but the rest remained in the airport terminal – which is now home to 300 migrants. Others are sleeping in police stations, with nearly 14,100 migrants in city shelters.
Migrants are seen lining up in El Paso on Tuesday to board the plane to Chicago
Tuesday marks the first time that the governor of Texas has used planes to transport the migrants. The cost of the flight to Texan taxpayers has not been revealed
Chicago, like New York City, is struggling to cope with the influx: since Abbott began the busing policy in August 2022, 607 buses have arrived in Chicago, carrying nearly 26,100 people.
On Sunday, a five-year-old migrant boy died in the freezing cold of the Pilsen shelter, south of downtown.
Video exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com shows 2,300 migrants huddled together in freezing temperatures underneath a leaking roof.
Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, condemned Abbott for Tuesday’s flight.
On Monday, he said that Abbott’s policy of moving migrants north was ‘evil’ and was seriously harming people.
‘They’re just dropping off people anywhere. Do you understand how raggedy and how evil that is?’ said Johnson.
‘You’re just going to put people on a bus, and just take them somewhere and drop them off in the middle of the night? It’s sickening.’
On Wednesday, Johnson again attacked Abbott, saying the policy was inhumane.
Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, said Abbott’s policy was ‘evil’ and inhumane
Migrants from Venezuela are seen camped out in the lobby of a police station in Chicago
‘The issue is not just how we respond in the city of Chicago,’ he said.
‘It’s the fact we have a governor, a governor, an elected official in the state of Texas, that is placing families on buses without shoes, cold, wet, tired, hungry, afraid, traumatized, and then they come to the city of Chicago, where we have homelessness, mental health clinics that have been shut down and closed. We have people who are seeking employment.
‘The governor of Texas needs to take a look in the mirror, with the chaos he’s causing for the people of this country.’
Abbott’s press secretary hit back, saying Johnson needed to take the issue up with his fellow Democrat, Joe Biden.
‘Because Mayor Johnson is failing to live up to his city’s ‘Welcoming City’ ordinance by targeting migrant buses from Texas, we are expanding our operation to include flights to Chicago, like the Biden Administration has been doing across the country,’ said Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott.
‘Until President Biden steps up and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue taking historic action to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis.’
O’Hare International Airport accommodated hundreds of migrants in a screened off area as the crisis gathered steam this summer
The shelter where the five-year-old boy died on Sunday in Chicago is run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a Kansas-based contractor, which the city paid $100 million to operate since September 2022
Five-year-old Jean Carlo Martinez Rivero fell ill while at the Pilsen migrant shelter and was pronounced dead on arrival in hospital on Sunday days later
A photo of a small girl bundled up in a pink puffer jacket and matching pants and beanie showed the warehouse was not keeping out the winter chill
This video shows different child coughing and crying as they had their temperature taken and were examined by volunteers
It is not clear how much the flight cost, and whether Texan taxpayers were funding the scheme.
Since April 2022, Abbott has bused migrants to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles – all Democrat-run cities.
In total, Texas has bused over 80,000 people from border cities to those six cities, according to the governor’s office.
The numbers of migrants crossing the border is breaking records.
There were 130,000 attempts to cross the US-Mexico border in the first 17 days of November and there have been at least 167,000 so far in December.
One popular crossing, Eagle Pass, in Texas, had 14,000 migrants arrive on Tuesday – near a town that is home to just 30,000 Texans.
Eagle Pass only has 58 uniformed police officers and many of them are also helping Border Patrol handle the masses.
Border Patrol agents normally posted at roadside checkpoints leading into the US have also been redirected to help in Eagle Pass.
Law enforcement officials fear drug cartels will take advantage of the situation to smuggle both people and drugs across the border in the chaos.
‘It’s an absolute collapse of the border,’ said Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a retired border agent, who now runs neighboring Terrell County.
‘You increase the amount of gotaways, you increase the opportunity for cartels to bring drugs in successfully.
‘It’s a wide open border. Come as you please.’
Aerial view showing migrants queuing at the border fence in an attempt to cross into the US, in Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico
Thousands of migrants wrapped in silver thermal blankets, many hoping to seek asylum in the US, are gathered under a bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, waiting for their chance to surrender to the US Border Patrol
Border Patrol agents herd hundreds of migrants into lines at a processing center
Throngs of new arrivals wait their turn to be processed by border patrol after surrendering
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona, show hundreds of new arrivals wearing backpacks with their meager possessions walking along the wall
The federal government responded to the surge at the border by shutting down ports of entry entirely, causing havoc for international trade.
US Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, announced it was shutting down railways into the US in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, to deal with the influx of migrants.
Vehicular and pedestrian crossings at ports in San Ysidro, California, and Lukeville, Arizona, were also closed in the past few weeks.
In Eagle Pass, the migrant emergency is disrupting life for people who commute to and from Mexico every day – turning commutes between the two countries that used to take under 10 minutes into 11-hour waits due to international bridge closures.