The Democratic mayors of Chicago and Denver gave a joint interview Sunday in which they acknowledged the “crisis” on the southern border but placed much of the blame on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ® for creating more “chaos” in his approach to migration.
In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stressed their frustration with the surprise arrivals of buses and airplanes in theirs and other cities.
Johnston said he has not considered turning away buses — as some other cities’ mayors have – but asked that city officials be notified that the buses were coming before they arrived and that the buses arrive during regular working hours and at regular bus stops.
“All we want is a system that is humanitarian for both the new folks that are arriving and for our cities and our city employees. And so, we understand there will be an inflow, we have already had 35,000 migrants arrive to Denver, we’ve successfully helped them integrate into the country here,” Johnston said. “What we don’t want is people arriving at 2:00 in the morning at a city and county building with women and children outside in 10-degree weather and no support.
Once again I’m surprised that what a Republican is doing is perfectly legal. You’d think that there would be rules about treating migrants like chips in a political game of poker.
I still don’t understand why this is not human trafficking. What makes this legal?
Nobody has explained this to my satisfaction, either. Including the letter of the law, which my reading of agrees this is human trafficking. If there’s some case law that says it’s not human trafficking, I have yet to find it.
The GOP and conservative pundits have become quite adept at lying while leaving a little bit of room for ambiguity. I was under the impression the migrants are being heavily mislead and they’re agreeing to be moved to other states. I’m pretty sure there has to be an element of force or coercion for it to be considered human trafficking and the GOP is stretching the letter of the law just before it snaps.
Can’t make a legal agreement under duress, which the migrants definitely are, but even if they fully understood and weren’t in a position to argue with officials at the time, they’re being misled. Misrepresentations of material fact, which is a basis for voiding any legal agreement predicated on those facts.
Funny how all the GQP arguments and justifications dry up as soon as you start looking at it through the same lens as any other contract, ain’t it.
But isn’t misleading them a form of coercion?
All I can come up with is that Biden thinks if he starts a DOJ investigation over human trafficking undocumented immigrants, it will lose him votes. Because I’m no lawyer, but this seems like a legal no-brainer to me.
What makes it legal is a lack of successful litigation against these actions. If someone got put in federal prison for it, they would stop shipping people all over the country.
I think you’re right and I wish Biden would have his DOJ do something about it.
The San Antonio sheriff doesn’t think so, and recommended charges related to the Martha’s vineyard flight at least. DA there still reviewing it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-flights-marthas-vineyard-floride-role-60-minutes-transcript/
No idea why more isn’t being done on the federal level. My guess would be political expediency though. Texas especially loves taking illegal and unconstitutional actions and the using the resulting federal lawsuits as evidence that democrats are advocating for totally open borders, totally misdefining what the word “sanctuary city” means, or some other related BS. They might think it’d be an especially bad look for the Justice department to be running criminal investigations against multiple of Biden’s political opponents (not saying I agree with this, just thinking about why they might not want to pursue this criminally from their pont of view).
I searched hard but couldn’t find any news or updates about what the federal government is doing about this though. As far as I can tell moving migrants away from the border to reduce overcrowding is somewhat along lines with their policies anyways.
https://news.yahoo.com/amid-border-surge-biden-admin-183015276.html
If Abbot and Republicans weren’t so intent on dumping migrants in the middle of the night in dangerous conditions as far from resources as possible, it’s possible the federal government would even be cooperating with the effort. The new city ordinances requiring advance notice of transport by busses will hopefully help. Moving migrants away from crowding at the border and more evenly distributing them across the country might be part of the solution, but these political stunts by Republicans are intended to hurt not help them, feds really need to be doing something.
Thanks for looking into it. And yeah, I said something similar elsewhere that maybe the reason Biden isn’t acting on this is because he thinks it will hurt him electorally, but I really wish it didn’t come down to that because these are human beings being shipped to northern cities with no money or protection in the middle of winter. That’s a potential death sentence.
Democrats’ unwillingness to pursue justice.