From border town to ‘border town,’ bused migrants seek new lives in D.C. area

Updated September 7, 2022 at 3:51 p.m. EDT|Published September 7, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

A Venezuelan family is instructed by a Border Patrol officer near the Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras International Bridge shortly after crossing the Rio Grande on Aug. 12. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

DEL RIO, Tex. — They marched in caravans for weeks, past dead bodies while dodging kidnappers and thieves — and now, some of the migrants crowded inside a tiny stucco building just past the Rio Grande were looking at a star scribbled on an envelope carrying their U.S. asylum petitions.

Courtesy of the state of Texas, this meant they qualified for a free bus ride to a place that has been largely unprepared to receive them: Washington, D.C.

“They’re going to give you food,” a Spanish-speaking volunteer at the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition temporary “respite center” said about the state-chartered buses, talking to the migrants who earlier in the week had surrendered themselves at the border to U.S. immigration officials. “It has WiFi, so you can connect with your families.”

So far, more than 230 buses carrying nearly 9,400 migrants, including families with young children, have arrived in D.C. since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began offering free passage to the nation’s capital in April, with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) following suit in May. Last month, buses from Texas started heading to New York and Chicago, too.

Abbott and Ducey, along with many other Republicans, are focusing increased attention on the record number of border crossings by large groups arriving from South and Central America, and as far away as Senegal. Both governors are using the busloads of migrants as a political statement about what they have called lax Biden administration border policies.

But for many of those who have accepted the rides, any political gamesmanship has been irrelevant. The buses have turned into a welcomed pipeline, given that many already had plans to head east, either to live in the D.C. area or somewhere else another bus ride away.

In the process, their arrival has turned D.C. into “an unofficial border town,” said Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, one of the agencies helping the migrants.

Alejandra Pinto and her family are among thousands of Central American migrants who arrived in D.C. via buses from Texas and Arizona during the summer. (Video: Hope Davison/The Washington Post)

With buses letting off more migrants near Union Station several times a week and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and the Biden administration at odds over who should do more to help them, the existing apparatus of support is in triage mode, Laborde said.

“It’s been intense,” she said, in between attending to recently arrived migrants staying inside a temporary shelter run by her organization in Maryland that holds 50 people at a time. “It’s something that we are not used to.”

The ‘Norteño Express’

An empty D.C.-bound bus waited outside the Val Verde center, its “Norteño Express” sign facing the shuttered businesses and weathered houses that line the way toward a popular border crossing point at the Rio Grande.

Tiffany Burrow, director of operations for the faith-based center, was inside hurriedly sorting through case folders — each representing someone who had just arrived from a nearby federal processing center. More men, women and children were already inside a small holding area, preparing to board the bus, which could hold about 52 people.

When the Val Verde center opened in 2019, Burrow and her two volunteer staff members helped about 25 migrants a week, offering sandwiches, water and a few hours of rest while helping them figure out how to get where they needed to go.

Now, they can see as many as 1,000 or more per week, Burrow said. Her remote city of about 38,000 residents — about 150 miles west of San Antonio — saw 16,000 newly arrived Haitians camped below the International…