New York City Mayors Eric Adams and Chicago Mayors Lori E. Lightfoot have asked Colorado to stop sending migrants by bus to both cities.
They made the request as President Joe Biden prepares to visit the US-Mexico border.
The two mayors said in a joint letter to Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis that the state sent hundreds of migrants to both cities during the month of December, at a time when reception centers were at capacity.
“Although we share the concern of welcoming the flood of asylum seekers, overloading other cities is not the solution,” the leaders said according to the Bloomberg news agency.
The road trip from Colorado to New York takes nearly 30 hours, while to Chicago 16 hours. A situation which makes the arrival of asylum seekers even more precarious and which has been denounced by charities.
This is not the first time US governors have been targeted for sending migrants by bus to other regions. At the end of December, the White House denounced the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, of having endangered the lives of migrants after chartered buses arrived at the door of the official residence of the US vice president, Kamala Harris.
“Governor Abbott abandoned children by the side of the road in sub-zero temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any federal or local authority,” a Biden administration spokesman criticized.
These allegations come at the gates of Joe Biden’s first presidential visit to El Paso this Sunday, the border region between the United States and Mexico which represents one of the hot spots on the immigration issue.
