NYC Sues Texas Bus Companies for $708 Million Over Migrants

Greg Farrell
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- New York City sued 17 charter bus companies that have transported migrants from Texas, saying they should pay the $708 million in costs the city has incurred caring for more than 33,600 people sent from the Lone Star state.

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Since the spring of 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has given bus tickets to tens of thousands of migrants as part of a program to relocate them out of his state to cities like New York. New York Mayor Eric Adams blasted Abbott in a Thursday statement announcing the suit.

“New York City has and will always do our part to manage this humanitarian crisis, but we cannot bear the costs of reckless political ploys from the state of Texas alone,” Adams said. “Today we are taking legal action against 17 companies that have taken part in Texas Governor Abbott’s scheme to transport tens of thousands of migrants to New York City in an attempt to overwhelm our social services system.”

In a statement, Abbott called the suit “baseless” and suggested that it was unconstitutional. “Every migrant bused or flown to New York City did so voluntarily, after having been authorized by the Biden Administration to remain in the United States,” he said. “As such, they have constitutional authority to travel across the country that Mayor Adams is interfering with.”

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan cited a New York law which penalizes those who knowingly bring “a needy person from out of the state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge.”

The city asked for a court order requiring the bus companies to pay for the cost of caring for the migrants they transported from Texas to New York. Most of the companies were based in Texas, though some were located in Louisiana, Ohio and Iowa.

Several of the companies, including Buckeye Coach LLC, Carduan Tours LLC, Classic Elegance Coaches LLC, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

In response to the deluge of migrants arriving by bus, Adams issued an executive order last week requiring coordination between charter companies bringing the migrants with the city. The mayor’s office said many of the bus companies being sued are “now evading compliance with the executive order by busing migrants to New Jersey train stations and then having the migrants take a train to New York City.”

The suit comes as the influx of migrants from the Southwest threatens to overwhelm the city’s finances and become a political and financial headache for Mayor Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Since April of last year, New York City has spent an estimated $3.5 billion on shelter and services for the more than 164,500 individuals who have come through its intake center, the mayor’s office said.

The suit filed by city lawyers and Steven Banks of the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP. Banks, the city’s social services commissioner under Mayor Bill de Blasio, was also a longtime Legal Aid Society lawyer who fought the city on behalf of homeless people.

--With assistance from Julie Fine and Laura Nahmias.

(Updates with statement from Abbott.)

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