L.A. City Council seeks lawsuit over bussing of migrants from Texas

Los Angeles City Council leaders filed two separate motions on Wednesday pushing for legal action against Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott over the busing of migrants to the region.

A total of 11 buses carrying asylum seekers have arrived in L.A. since June, with the latest getting to Union Station on Wednesday. The last bus carried 35 asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Venezuela and even Russia.

The council members voted unanimously on both motions, with one calling for a probe investigating whether Abbott’s actions violated any criminal laws, like kidnapping and human trafficking. Some council leaders argue many families traveled on lengthy bus rides with little or no food and water.

“The message is clear that the city of Los Angeles will not accept this kind of behavior,” Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez said. “The governors are doing this for political points and that’s unacceptable. You cannot be playing with people’s lives in that way, and so if they did something unlawful, we want to make sure that we uncover it and we take any proper steps.”

In response, Abbott’s spokesperson slammed council leaders, calling them hypocrites after the council recently voted to have Los Angeles become a sanctuary city, tightening policies involving the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement.

Every individual who arrived here in L.A. did so voluntarily, and buses had ample food and water, Abbott’s office indicated.

The sanctuary city label is why Abbott began sending migrants to L.A.

He argued that small border towns in Texas are “overwhelmed and overrun” by migrants.

“Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its…sanctuary city status,” Abbott said earlier this summer.

The busing of migrants started in April 2022 when Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C.

Since then, the governor has added New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Denver as destinations.

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