An eighth bus from Texas carrying asylum seekers arrived in Los Angeles Thursday morning, organizers said.
A total of 40 migrants arrived at Union Station from Brownsville, Texas, around 11:10 a.m. Thursday, according to the L.A. Welcomes Collective.
The asylum seekers came from Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and 12 were children. Almost all of them have relatives, loved ones or sponsors in California, the organization said.
The migrants were taken to a receiving site in Chinatown where there were offered food, clothing, hygiene kits, health checkups and legal immigration orientations. The collective is also facilitating reunions with family members.
“We have joined hands and resources in Los Angeles to receive and treat asylum seekers with dignity and respect. We hope that everyone will arrive safely and that these modes of transportation do not compromise anyone’s health, especially the children,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, said.
To date, 323 asylum seekers have arrived in Los Angeles via a bus from Texas.
The first bus carrying migrants from Texas arrived in Los Angeles on June 14. Five buses arrived in July, and one arrived earlier this month.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said that small border towns in Texas are “overwhelmed and overrun” by migrants.
“Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its…sanctuary city status,” Abbott said earlier this summer.
The busing of migrants started in April 2022 when Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C.
Since then, Abbott has added New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Denver as destinations.