Greg Abbott's Christmas Gift: Human Trafficking.

Essays | Frank Yang | March 16th, 2023.

A few days after the winter solstice of 2022, the staple Americana celebration of Christmas Eve was beginning for families across the country. The nation was bracing through an extreme cold front, but that didn’t stop the festivities for many. President Biden and First Lady Dr. Biden were decorating the Oval Office. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was making groundbreaking international interactions. Texas Governor Greg Abbott was showing off his 58-million-dollar plantation-style home. But Abbott’s video didn’t tell the full story of what he had been doing for the past few weeks.

At the same time he had been enjoying his Christmas Eve night with his family, two buses full of foreign migrants seeking asylum in the United States were being once again being transported across the continental United States to be dropped off near Vice President Kamala Harris’s home as a part of his political strategy to call out Democrats’ inaction towards the illegal migrants arriving in his state. 

This “strategy” further attracted other politicians, including Former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. All of these political leaders lay claims that their actions are legal and warranted with the migrants’ knowledge. However, court cases that are currently being processed argue otherwise. Migrants had been told they would be able to get off the bus at regular stops, but their experiences detail the opposite to be true. Because of this, migrants have turned to suing DeSantis, seeking damages for being forcibly moved across the country without their knowledge. Many argue that this is a clear case of human trafficking and kidnapping. Additionally, it was found that funding for some of these actions had come from state funds, meaning a clear violation of the allocation of taxpayers’ money.

These political stunts have resulted in over 10,000 migrants being transported from Texas to Democratic states across the nation. We’ve seen communities coming together in arms for the migrants, being escorted and cared for by nearby communities. But these actions beg the question on the morality and ethics of modern politics. Migrants, seeking an escape from their old lives, are being tricked, lied to, and forcibly moved for the sake of politics, becoming tools for politicians to spread their beliefs.