LOS ANGELES — A third bus of migrants within 30 days has arrived in Los Angeles from Texas, according to the LA Welcomes Collective. Thirty asylum seekers arrived at LA’s Union Station from Brownsville, Texas, at 12:40 Thursday, after traveling 30 hours on an air-conditioned bus chartered from the binational company Norteno Express.
The 21 adults and nine children, including two babies, are from Venezuela, Mexico, Haiti and China, Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights LA spokesperson Jorge-Mario Cabrera told Spectrum News 1. They are currently at St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in downtown LA receiving food, water, clothing and immigration law advice.
Cabrera said most of the migrants will be housed with local families, though some will continue to Northern California, Utah, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina as their final destinations.
The group is the third to arrive in Los Angeles on a Texas-state-funded bus, Cabrera said. The first arrived on June 14, followed by another July 1.
“This is the third attempt to forego the responsibility that state has to see to the folks who need them,” Cabrera said. “We don’t know if it will happen again, but we will maximize the limited resources that we have to assist those migrants and receive them with dignity and respect.”
CHIRLA is part of a new network of immigrant rights groups, immigration legal services providers and faith organizations called the LA Welcomes Collective, which helps provide assistance to migrants arriving in LA. The group is coordinating with the city and county of Los Angeles.
“The city has continued to work with city departments, the county and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year,” LA Mayor Karen Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement. “As we have before, when we became aware of the bus yesterday, we activated our plan.”