But life remained hard – money was tight and expenses mounted. So he set out for the United States, an odyssey that required him to travel on foot through the Central American jungle infested with poisonous snakes and bandits, sometimes passing the corpses of people who died on the same journey. Now Maldonado and thousands of other asylum seekers from across Latin America and the Caribbean are caught up in the political battle over US immigration policy after two Republican governors began sending busloads of migrants to New York and Washington. Border cities like San Diego have long struggled with influxes of asylum seekers and have built well-oiled machines to respond, but the nation’s largest city and its capital have been caught flat-footed. That created an opening for Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona to take advantage of what they see as failed Democratic leadership. Nearly 8,000 migrants have arrived on state-sponsored bus trips, straining the resources and humanitarian services of both cities, which have also sought help from the federal government. “This can be chaotic. But we want to send a message: We’re here to help, and we want to put politics aside,” New York Immigration Commissioner Manuel Castro said as he greeted the morning’s arriving immigrants. Abbott started the practice in April with Washington, and Doug Ducey followed suit in May. Abbott also recently started sending buses to New York. For immigrants, politics is little understood—and much less relevant than finding temporary shelter, jobs, and long-term residence in America. “I’ve heard that the governor of Texas is anti-immigrant,” Maldonado said outside a shelter in New York. “It’s like a war between the Texas governor’s party and Biden’s party.” A voluntary consent form for free transportation from Texas tells immigrants that Washington is where the president and members of Congress “are most immediately able to help address the needs of immigrants.” Immigrants who sign a consent form for a free trip to New York are informed that the city has designated itself a “sanctuary” for immigrants, who are provided with food and shelter. U.S. authorities stopped migrants 1.43 million times at the border with Mexico from January to July, a 28 percent increase over the same period last year. Many are released on parole or with notices to appear in immigration court. The sight of both cities struggling to cope with the influx drew overt schadenfreude from Abbott, who called New York “the ideal destination for these immigrants, who can get the abundance of city services and housing for the which Mayor Eric Adams boasted inside the shelter. city.” In both cities, social service charities and churches have mobilized to support the new arrivals, offering temporary shelter, medical care and often a ticket to their next destination as they await an immigration court date. “Many are fleeing persecution and other very serious conditions. They are confused. And we want to make sure that we support them as much as possible and make sure that they are not used as political pawns,” Castro said. On a recent day in August, a busload of 41 immigrants from Arizona arrived at a church in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where they were greeted by workers from SAMU First Response, an international aid agency. Within minutes the group was enjoying a hot meal inside the church and filling out arrival forms. Texas buses arrive randomly, said Tatiana Labord, the agency’s executive director. They only hear from charity groups that a bus carrying a certain number of people has departed. Sometime about 48 hours later, that bus drops riders off at Washington’s Union Station. Arizona provides detailed manifests of passengers and their nationalities, coordinates arrival times and has medical staff on every bus. “They don’t just want to dump people here,” Laborde said. Many of those who make it to Washington don’t stay long. Mayor Muriel Bowser, in her second request for National Guard support, told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that most migrants stay up to three days before moving on to their final destinations. “They don’t know much about D.C. other than the president is here,” Laborde said. The Pentagon on Monday rejected the mayor’s request for help, saying that using the National Guard would be inappropriate and would harm the troops’ overall readiness by forcing some to cancel or interrupt military training. Among them was Kelin Enriquez, another Venezuelan. She and her children first arrived in Washington and later found themselves at a family center in the Bronx to plan the family’s next steps. “Nobody leaves their land because they want to. We want to work. We want a better chance,” said Enriquez, who helped care for Alzheimer’s patients in her hometown. Some immigrants see a free ticket across the border as the best of bad options. For Eduardo Garcia, the top priorities were to find a job and a place to live and start life anew. It was a painful journey, even if he hadn’t broken his left ankle while trying to keep his wife from falling down the dangerous path. He limped in pain for more than 1,000 miles. “I didn’t care because I cared more about getting here,” he said. He didn’t tell anyone about his broken limb until he got to New York, where he got medical help, a cast and crutches. In New York, many of the immigrants head to the offices of Catholic Charities. Officials in Texas — it’s unclear who — listed the office as the immigration address, which confused church officials in the New York Diocese. The diocese has now received more than 1,300 court notices on behalf of immigrants. “I think maybe we were careless, a little bit frustrated by the Texas and Arizona governments that just put people on buses to DC with no plan on the other end,” said Mr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of immigrant services for Catholic Charities in New York. In the past two months, the procession of Venezuelans seeking refuge in the United States has increased dramatically. In July, Border Patrol agents stopped Venezuelans 17,603 times — a 34% increase from June and nearly triple from July 2021. The United States does not recognize the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro over allegations that the country’s 2018 elections were fraudulent. The lack of official recognition complicates the country’s ability to take back asylum seekers. The Mexican government also refuses to accept the migrants, which leaves the US with few options for handling the Venezuelans. At a New York shelter, brothers Leonardo Oviedo, 22, and Angel Mota, 19, looked dazed shortly after arriving in New York. They had plans to reconnect with an acquaintance in New Jersey. Big plans lie ahead. Oviedo wants to find a job. Mota wants to go to school. How they will realize their dreams was still uncertain as the couple sifted through photos of relatives they left behind in Venezuela, including their mother, grandmother, brother and sister. For now, neither brother is particularly worried about the politics that brought them here. “We had nowhere to go,” Mota said outside a shelter on a blustery summer morning. “We would be welcome here.”
Khalil reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Anita Snow in Phoenix, Claudia Torrens and Robert Bumsted in New York and Jacquelyn Martin and Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.
