🚨Greg Abbott Spends $124 Million of Taxpayer Funds Bussing Migrants Throughout the States

Texas has spent more than $124 million sending buses of migrants to sanctuary cities, according to records obtained by Nexstar.

According to documents Nexstar obtained, Texas has paid $124,603,616.19 to bus more than 100,000 migrants from the state’s border communities to Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles as of Jan. 10. That equals out to 2,245 buses year to date, an average of 45 migrants per bus.

Documents obtained through a public information request to the Texas Division of Emergency Management — the agency tasked with this initiative. The majority of the payments have been made to Wynne Transportation LLC, with a handful of payments made to Transportation Management Services Inc.

TDEM has chartered more than 200+ buses through Wynne Transportation, an Irving-based company that has reviews describing it as a “first class service.”

According to the records, the most expensive part of these trips are security personnel. In one instance, Wynne charged TDEM $61,2000 for “security guards” on May 20 — a day when 19 migrants arrived at the nation’s capital.

A senior spokesperson with TDEM told Nexstar the state saw security as a necessary precaution to take, in order to protect “passengers and drivers as they make a cross-country trip,” noting the immigrants could “easily become targets.”

The drivers also cost tens-of-thousands of dollars collectively, with costs varying from the hundreds range to thousands — depending on hours worked and mileage rate.

Based on the total cost and how many migrants have been bused, each one is costing the state about $1,753. This figure factors in all assorted costs — driver pay, private security and all costs associated with each bus chartered.

Just by a quick google search looking at the cost of Greyhound tickets from Texas border towns to these cities to compare what an individual ticket costs for this week:

An economy one-way ticket from Del Rio to Chicago, for example, would cost $166. A ticket from Eagle Pass to N.Y.C. costs $228 and a one-way from Laredo to D.C. costs $321.

The program sends migrants to other U.S. cities as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” — a multibillion dollar initiative to slow down border crossings. The Republican governor began sending busloads of migrants outside of the state in April 2022, saying it will “ease the burden of immigration on Texas cities.”

Who is paying for the buses?

All of the state’s trips are being funded by Texas taxpayer dollars, coming from money appropriated by the Texas Legislature for border security under Operation Lone Star.

The state is also pooling funds from the governor’s online donation portal for anyone to chip-in to his initiative.