Texas Gov. Abbott flies migrants to Chicago in protest of city ordinance

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's administration says it is now flying migrants to Chicago, in an apparent escalation of the governor's efforts to transport asylum seekers to sanctuary cities.

A City of Chicago spokesperson says a private plane chartered by the Texas Department of Emergency Management (TDEM), the agency tasked with coordinating the governor's busing operations, flew from El Paso, Texas, and arrived at O'Hare airport on Tuesday evening. Abbott's office says more than 120 migrants were on board and had signed consent waivers to be transported to Chicago.

The move to fly migrants to the Windy City was in retaliation of a city ordinance implemented by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to fine busing companies dropping off migrants late at night and without notifying city officials, the governor's office said.

"Because Mayor Johnson is failing to live up to his city's "Welcoming City" ordinance by targeting migrant buses from Texas, we are expanding our operation to include flights to Chicago, like the Biden Administration has been doing across the country," a statement shared with ABC News by Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said.

A video shared by Gov. Abbott on X appeared to show migrants, including several children, boarding the plane.

"The governor of Texas is determined to cause chaos throughout the country and this is after City Council passed an ordinance that I put forth to provide more structure, to provide more calm and more coordination with how buses are arriving in the city of Chicago," Mayor Johnson told Chicago's WTTW in a recent interview.

Ana Maria Giordano, who had traveled on the flight with her three children, told ABC's WLS-TV in Chicago that the people transporting them on the flight left them "deserted."

"The people who brought us were the first to get off the plane and we never saw them again," Giordano told WLS in Spanish. "We kept asking what was happening but the people at the airport didn't know. They just asked us to remain calm and told us to stay inside the terminal so we wouldn't be cold."

A spokesperson for the City of Chicago said those individuals left before they could be questioned by police.

"Two unidentified individuals who flew with the plane reportedly fled Signature Flight and left the scene in an Uber prior to the arrival of police," the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for TDEM said these claims are "inaccurate and misleading."

"This trip included private security personnel, just as the border buses do, to ensure the safety of passengers. Those personnel left the FBO upon arrival of all passengers in Chicago and the completion of their trip," the spokesperson for the Texas Department of Energy said.

Abbott's administration has been transporting migrants to sanctuary cities since April 2022, an effort he says is meant to address overwhelmed border towns and to protest what he has repeatedly called the Biden administration's "open-border policies."

On Tuesday, Abbott posted on X that his administration had bused over 82,900 migrants so far, including more than 24,500 to Chicago alone. The city has since been grappling with a large influx of asylum seekers ending up in the city's care at emergency shelters including some set up at police stations and at O'Hare airport.

In a statement the White House slammed Gov. Abbott, saying he is "showing how little regard or respect he has for human beings" and called the flight to Chicago a "political stunt."

"Governor Abbott leaves migrants on the side of the road in the dead of winter, installs razor wire making it more dangerous for Border Patrol to do their jobs, and promotes extreme laws that will make communities in Texas less safe. Governor Abbott is not interested in solutions, he only seeks to use people as political pawns," White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said.