A bus carrying immigrants from a border town in Texas arrived in central Los Angeles on Saturday for the second time in less than three weeks.
Los Angeles mayoralty spokesman Karen Bass said the office was not officially notified but learned on Friday that the bus had been dispatched from Brownsville, Texas, to Union Station in Los Angeles. Bass, Zack Seidl, said in a statement.
“The city of Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect, dignity and will,” he said.
The bus arrived around 12:40, and the 41 asylum seekers on board were greeted by religious and immigrant rights groups. Eleven children were on the bus, according to a statement from the Migrant Human Rights Coalition.
Asylum seekers came from Cuba, Belize, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela. They received water, food, clothing, and initial immigration legal assistance at the center and church at St. Anthony’s Croatian Church.
Coalition spokesman Jorge Mario Cabrera said the group “was less tense and less chaotic than last time”. Most of them were picked up by the family in the area, he said, and apparently they had sandwiches and water, unlike the first time.
He said Los Angeles is not the final destination for the six people who would have been traveling to Las Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland.
The city hosted a bus carrying 42 immigrants from Texas on June 14. Many of them came from Latin American countries, including Honduras and Venezuela, and had no water or food.
Bass said at the time that the city would not be affected by “petty politicians playing with human lives”.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he sent the bus to Los Angeles because California declared itself a “safe haven” for immigrants and expanded protections for people living in the country illegally.
It was not clear if Abbott sent the last bus. A phone message to his office was not immediately received.
Earlier in June, the state of Florida picked up dozens of immigrants from Texas and sent them on a private plane to the California capital, surprising shelters and aid workers in Sacramento.
