(NewsNation) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday a $708 million lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies that helped transport more than 33,000 migrants from Texas over the last two years.
The city wants the companies to reimburse it for the costs incurred for providing emergency shelter and services to migrants, the city said in a news release. Adams’ administration contends the bus companies violated New York’s Social Services Law when they transported the migrants without the intent to pay for the cost of their continued care.
“New York City has and will always do our part to manage this humanitarian crisis, but we cannot bear the costs of reckless political ploys from the state of Texas alone,” Adams, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Governor Abbott’s continued use of migrants as political pawns is not only chaotic and inhumane but makes clear he puts politics over people. Today’s lawsuit should serve as a warning to all those who break the law in this way.”
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has been busing migrants north to cities including New York, Chicago and Denver to alleviate the strain on Texas cities and resources. Migrant encounters reached a record high the past two years, with 2.37 million in 2022 and 2.47 million in 2023.
Adams contends in the lawsuit that the bus companies engaged in “bad faith” conduct to “execute Texas’s plan to sow chaos and shift the traditional cost of migration at the southern border to New York City and other cities across the country.”
The New York Social Services Law bars people from bringing “needy people” into the state “for the purpose of making him a public charge.”
Abbott called the lawsuit “baseless” and threatened his own legal action.
“It’s clear that Mayor Adams knows nothing about the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or about the constitutional right to travel that has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Every migrant bused or flown to New York City did so voluntarily, after having been authorized by the Biden Administration to remain in the United States,” Abbott said in a statement. “As such, they have constitutional authority to travel across the country that Mayor Adams is interfering with. If the Mayor persists in this lawsuit, he may be held legally accountable for his violations.”
The mayors of New York City, Denver and Chicago all recently implemented new measures and policies to reduce the flow of buses transporting migrants to their cities.
Adams, alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, held a joint virtual news conference Dec. 27 calling on the Biden administration to do more to help.
NewsNation correspondent Dray Clark contributed to this report.