A ninth bus from Texas, this one carrying 37 asylum seekers, arrived Monday in Los Angeles as the city continued to deal with the fallout from Tropical Storm Hilary, according to the immigrant rights group the L.A. Welcomes Collective.
The bus from Brownsville, Texas, arrived at Union Station about 6:45 p.m.
Activists called the transportation of migrants during the region’s recovery from Hilary “reprehensible.”
“It displays a complete and total lack of common humanity,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said in a release.
Aboard the bus were 16 families, including 14 children and an infant, according to the Welcomes Collective. Twenty of the migrants came from Venezuela, with the others hailing from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Ecuador.
“Migrants were immediately taken to a receiving site in Chinatown where they were offered urgent humanitarian support services, including food, clothing, hygiene kits, health checkups, and immigration-specific legal orientations,” the collective said.
Some of the passengers were reunited with family members or sponsors.
On Sunday evening, Tropical Storm Hilary battered the region with torrential rain, toppling trees, damaging roads and downing power lines in parts of Los Angeles and causing major flooding and marooning communities in other areas of Southern California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Southern California before the storm made landfall.
“It is an irresponsible political game by Texas officials to send vulnerable migrants and families into an emergency zone,” said Martha Arevalo, executive director of the Central American Resource Center.
Since mid-June, 360 people have arrived in Los Angeles by buses sent from Texas with the support of Gov. Greg Abbott.
The previous bus, which carried 40 asylum seekers including a 9-month-old infant, arrived in L.A. last week.