Texas Governor Guilty of Mass Kidnapping

By David Sole

Since April it has been reported that Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his administration have deported over 7,000 migrants from southern Texas to New York City. Buses have been filled with migrant families and individuals and sent north to the Big Apple. Reports indicate that these people are arriving in New York hungry, thirsty and in need of medical attention.

Most of those put on the buses are forced to do so or have boarded misinformed about what is happening to them. This policy by the ultra-conservative Republican governor and his minions amounts to mass kidnapping.

According to the online Free Dictionary kidnapping is “the crime of unlawfully seizing and carrying away a person by force or fraud, or seizing and detaining a person against his or her will with an intent to carry that person away at a later time.” Governor Abbott ought to be charged with multiple counts of this felony.

Officials of the City of New York along with numerous charity organizations have been meeting the buses upon arrival. Many migrants have ended up in homeless shelters which are not adequate for long term housing and are in short supply. Others are ending up on the streets. If the migrants have any family in the United States they have ended up many hundreds of miles from those relatives.

While the Texas “final solution” to migrants fosters racism and reaction, the “liberal” welcome in New York City is barely a bandaid applied to a gaping wound. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have put forward a comprehensive approach to deal with the large number of migrants entering the United States. Homelessness, unemployment, hunger, lack of health care and other ills are already widespread in this country due to the capitalist economic system and its political minions.

In fact the policies of the U.S. government toward the rest of the world’s nations, economic, political and military, are the root cause of mass migrations taking place in many regions. Imperialist military aggressions across the globe have driven millions of desperate people to risk everything to escape from terrible conditions. The imperialists cause the problem and then blame the victims, often using the issue to whip up right-wing sentiment among the masses at home.

Ending the imperialist policies abroad and the anti-working class policies at home will require a broad revolutionary challenge to the capitalist system and its two loyal parties. Such a struggle can only succeed when the working class inside the U.S. embraces and involves the millions of migrants, documented and undocumented who have come to this country.