Mayor Bass also highlighted that the city and county combined are grappling with a significant homeless population of nearly 70,000, a substantial portion of whom were living in makeshift tents.
Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, responded by explaining that the migrants on these buses had all signed a voluntary consent waiver before embarking on their journey. And they were being sent to a sanctuary city.
Sanctuary City status
In June, the Los Angeles City Council voted to designate the city as a sanctuary for immigrants, a move that echoed California’s existing status as a sanctuary state. This decision came with the intent of limiting the utilization of local and state resources to support the efforts of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as stipulated in a law signed back in 2017.
Mahaleris explains that “Migrants willingly chose to go to Los Angeles, having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agreed on the destination. And they were processed and released by the federal government, who are dumping them at historic levels in Texas border towns because of the Biden-made crisis.”