New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s (D) office is reporting that buses have been spotted dropping illegal immigrants off at New Jersey train stations where they are then taking trains into New York City.
“Our Administration has tracked the recent arrival of a handful buses of migrant families at various NJ TRANSIT train stations,” Gov. Murphy’s spokesman Tyler Jones told Politico.
“New Jersey is primarily being used as a transit point for these families — all or nearly all of them continued with their travels en route to their final destination of New York City. We are closely coordinating with our federal and local partners on this matter, including our colleagues across the Hudson,” Jones continued.
Buses have dropped off migrants at train stations in Trenton, Fanwood, Secaucus, and Jersey City, according to local officials.
It is believed that bus drivers are trying to circumvent a December 27th emergency executive order from NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who has said that buses must give a 32 hour advanced warning and can only drop off migrants on weekdays.
“New York City has begun to see another surge of migrants arriving, and we expect this to intensify over the coming days as a result of Texas Governor Abbott’s cruel and inhumane politics,” Adams said in a statement this week, as reported by The Hill.
According to Adams, a record of 14 buses arrived from Texas in one day last week.
In a statement, Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli called out Adams for the executive order’s requirements being “too stringent,” remarking that the bus drivers have “figured out a loophole in the system.”
Many of these migrants are being bussed to northern states through Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) Operation Lonestar. In protest of the Biden Administration’s border politics, Gov. Abbott has bussed over 100,000 illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities since April 2022, according to USA Today.
Migrants dropped at New Jersey train stations to avoid New York bus restrictions, NJ officials say https://t.co/yqFmXReBFi
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 2, 2024
Last week, Adams stated concerns about the immigration crisis during a press conference: “We’re seeing the erosion of the quality of life that we’ve improved on in such a short period of time of this administration,” he said, adding that “We’ve been impacted … for many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached the breaking point. We no longer are able to do that because of the volume in numbers.”
