D.C. mayor asks for National Guard to help with Texas, Arizona migrants
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said Thursday she is seeking to have 150 National Guard troops deployed to the city to help with the thousands of migrants arriving on chartered buses from Texas and Arizona, a politics-driven influx from those border states that has overwhelmed local aid groups.
“We need space, and we need the federal government to be involved,” Bowser said at the end of a news conference on a separate topic, calling the busloads of migrants seeking U.S. asylum who have been arriving at Union Station “a humanitarian crisis that we expect to escalate.”
Several aid groups assisting the migrants denounced the request as seeking to “militarize” a problem that should provoke a more humanitarian response in a region increasingly made up of immigrants.