Baby Hospitalized After Ride To NYC With Migrants Bused From TX: BP

NEW YORK CITY — A three-month-old baby girl required hospitalization after arriving in New York City Wednesday with a record-high number of asylum seekers from Texas, according to Manhattan's top elected official.

According to Borough President Mark Levine, the baby was not the only one who needed medical care.

The early-morning arrival of roughly 250 people was the latest instance of what New York leaders have blasted as a political stunt by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Roughly a half-dozen people needed to be hospitalized for unspecified injuries, according to Levine, who said their ailments did not appear to be life-threatening.

"These are not people who were getting medical care prior to coming here," Levine said in an interview.

And while Abbott has called the busing voluntary, Levine argued Wednesday that the migrants "did not give their consent in any real way to be sent here."

Abbott began transporting people to New York City earlier this month — saying he was using the migrants to exert pressure on Joe Biden's administration — after spending months shipping thousands of asylum-seeking migrants from the Texas-Mexico border up to Northern cities like Washington, D.C.

Levine, who met the five buses at Port Authority on Wednesday, said in a series of tweets that he was "truly appalled by how they have been treated prior to their arrival here."

A sizeable fraction of the people who arrived Wednesday have relatives in other parts of the U.S., Levine said, citing conversations between the migrants and the social service organizations that met them at Port Authority. But the migrants were not offered the opportunity to go anywhere but New York, Levine said.

The migrants were greeted at Port Authority on Wednesday by representatives from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs and various nonprofit groups, who offered them food, cell phones, Metro Cards, and help getting processed into the city's labyrinthine shelter system.

"It seems pretty well-organized," Levine said. "It was definitely heartening to see what New York is doing."

Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But the Texas governor penned an op-ed in the New York Post on Tuesday that accused Mayor Eric Adams of lying about the migrants' treatment — saying all had been given food and water and signed written agreements about being transported here.

Like his counterpart in Washington, Adams has warned that the influx of migrants could overwhelm the city's shelter system — though some homeless advocates accused Adams of unfairly blaming migrants for the city's own problems.

Levine said he expects the buses to continue to arrive "every single day" for the foreseeable future — noting that Abbott is in the midst of a re-election battle.

"Gov. Abbott is doing this for cynical political reasons," he said. "So I assume at least until the November election day."