The Los Angeles City Council voted to look into whether to pursue lawsuits against Republican Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott over his policy of busing asylum seekers from the border state.
The council voted unanimously for two motions on Wednesday to consider lawsuits against the state of Texas and Gov. Abbott. Council members demanded to know if Abbott would be criminally charged for kidnapping and human trafficking over the migrants.
“The message is clear that the city of Los Angeles will not accept this kind of behavior,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez to KTLA-TV.
“The governors are doing this for political points and that is unacceptable, we cannot be playing with people’s lives in that way,” he added, “and so if they did something unlawful, we want to make sure that we cover it and we take any proper steps.”
The second motion called on law enforcement officials in California to investigate whether Abbott had broken any laws and, if he had, to prosecute him.
Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris responded to the motions and blasted the council for what he said was hypocrisy.
“The L.A. City Council members are complete hypocrites. In June, they unanimously voted to become a sanctuary city, welcoming migrants to the city,” said Mahaleris in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.
He went on to add that migrants had voluntarily agreed to take the bus ride to Los Angeles and that they had “signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agreed on the destination.”
Mahaleris also denied the accusation from some that there was not enough food or water for the migrants on the buses for the long trip to California.
Abbott had excoriated L.A. city officials in a statement in June when he said that he would continue sending migrants until President Joe Biden did more to secure the U.S.-Mexico border against illegal alien crossings.
“Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status,” wrote Abbott at the time. “Our border communities are on the frontlines of President Biden’s border crisis, and Texas will continue providing this much-needed relief until he steps up to do his job and secure the border.”
KTLA reported that another migrant bus arrived on Wednesday at Union Station in L.A. carrying migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, and Peru.
Eleven buses carrying more than 400 migrants have arrived in Los Angeles from Texas since June 16, according to city officials.
Here’s a local news report about the vote:
L.A. City Council seeks lawsuit over Texas migrantswww.youtube.com
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