Less than every week since discovering shelter in Eagle Pass, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande, they launched into one other journey Thursday morning: this time to Washington DC, on a bus.
Many, like Figueroa, are glad to depart Texas. The buses cease at a number of cities alongside the best way to the Northeast, permitting migrants to disembark to reunite with pals and household in different areas. In Washington DC, Figueroa and her husband will meet with their pals.
“We’ve been on the road for so long, we don’t mind two or three more days,” Figueroa, 28, instructed CNN in Spanish.
Neither do Cousins Luis Pulido and Aynner Garrido, who spent six weeks touring from Venezuela to Texas. Pulido’s youthful brother didn’t make it to the US with them. He disappeared when the group was swimming throughout the Rio Grande. Shelter officers in Texas instructed Pulido they discovered his brother’s physique; he had drowned.
But the cousins have made it this far and are decided to proceed with their plans. They will board the bus to DC and will get off earlier than their vacation spot, in Kentucky, the place their family members can be ready to choose them up.
“They want to go on the buses,” mentioned Valeria Wheeler, the manager director of Mission: Border Hope, a non-profit group which serves the border group in Eagle Pass. “No one has been forced.”
The teams are going partly as a result of they need to, Wheeler added, and partly as a result of it is a free journey to New York or Washington.
“They’ve essentially weaponized this situation,” Manuel Castro, commissioner of the mayor’s immigrant affairs workplace, mentioned in a latest metropolis council listening to. “We’ve learned that the bus company that they’ve been working with has a nondisclosure agreement that does not allow them to communicate with the city of New York.” Abbott’s workplace didn’t reply CNN’s prior questions regarding nondisclosure agreements for bus corporations.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has additionally accused Abbott of forcing migrants onto the buses, which the governor has denied.
Back in Eagle Pass, greater than 40 folks, together with males, girls and youngsters, boarded the bus headed for DC Thursday morning together with cousins Pulido and Garrido, and Figueroa and her husband.
When she will get there, Figueroa instructed CNN she hopes to have the opportunity to discover work cooking, cleansing or in an workplace, to have the opportunity to help her household again residence.