Migrant encounters at southern border smash numbers sent to NYC and DC

The mayors of Washington D.C. and New York City have fumed at the number of migrants being bused to their cities by the governors of Texas and Arizona — but the numbers are just a fraction of the enormous numbers hitting the southern border each month.

Both D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Big Apple Mayor Eric Adams have excoriated border states for busing migrants to their cities, and have called for federal aid to what Bowser has described as a humanitarian crisis.

"We are focused, and we continue to be very focused on having the federal government do its part and take the lead in what we see as a growing humanitarian crisis with people who are seeking asylum coming across the country to get to their final destinations," Bowser said earlier this month.

She has also requested the National Guard be deployed on multiple occasions, a request that has so far been shot down by the Pentagon. The city’s attorney general on Thursday unveiled a grant program to fund overwhelmed non-profits.

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Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has appealed for help from the federal government, while diving into a war of words with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for busing thousands of migrants to Port Authority.

"We just need help. We need help," Adams said in a press conference earlier this week. "And we're going to have some specific items that we're going to go over with the president. But we want assistance. We believe FEMA should step in."

"The federal government and the state should assist in this as well because it's more than housing… housing, education, food, translation, services, health care, all of these issues," Asams said.

On Thursday he took aim again at Abbott: "He is an anti-American governor that is really going against everything we stand for. And I am going to do everything feasible to make sure the people of Texas realize how harmful he is to us globally." 

However, the numbers that the cities are facing pale in comparison to those hitting the border each day. Adams said this week that more than 4,000 migrants have come into the city’s asylum system in recent months.

Meanwhile, Abbott has said the state has sent approximately 6,000 migrants to Washington D.C., and only started busing migrants to New York City last week. Arizona has denied sending migrants to New York City, and Gov. Doug Ducey’s office has reportedly said that it has sent more than 1,000 migrants to D.C.

While those numbers do not include the numbers of migrants who make their way to the cities on their own, or who are helped to get there by non-profits at the border who assist migrants with travel, the numbers being bused are just a small fraction of what is being faced at the border.

Since March, there have been more than 200,000 migrant encounters at the border a month, and there haven’t been fewer than 150,000 migrant encounters in any month since February 2021. While some of those are returned under Title 42 public health protections, many are released into the United States in places like Arizona and Texas.

On Saturday, one single group crossing into the U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas, had approximately 150 illegal migrants. Earlier in the week, Fox News saw multiple groups of hundreds of migrants crossing into the U.S. at that one crossing point alone.

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A source told Fox News that the Del Rio Sector has seen nearly 2,000 illegal crossings in one 24 hour period -- with only a handful being expelled via the Title 42 public health order. Meanwhile, in Yuma Sector in Arizona there were 669 illegal crossings in a single day.

Overall there have been more than 1.7 million migrant encounters at the border this fiscal year, exceeding last year’s historic numbers.

"You see New York, you see Washington kind of drowning with a few buses," McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos told Fox News. "We used to get over a thousand-something people a day." 

"The city of McAllen was able to deal with thousands of immigrants a day," Villalobos said. "I think they can handle a few hundred." 

Border states have started taking matters into their own hands. In addition to busing migrants to other cities, the governors have also ramped up resources and started building their own border walls. Arizona Gov. Ducey on Friday announced that construction had begun on plugging holes in the border wall with welded shipping containers topped with razor wire.

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"Arizona has had enough," Ducey said in a statement. "We can’t wait any longer."

Fox News' Bill Melugin and Jon Michael Raasch contributed to this report.