New York City officials say a new video shows migrants, who were bused to the city from Texas, wearing wristbands with bar codes on them, CBS2 news in New York reported.
The video was shared with the television news station by city officials, who claim the wristbands are a way of Texas keeping track of the migrants.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott "is bar coding people and treating them as less than human, as if they were cattle," said Manuel Castro, the city's commissioner of Immigrant Affairs. "I was incredibly shocked when I saw children with bracelets and bar codes and security personnel treating them as less than human beings.
"It appears to us that asylum seekers are being asked to wear these bracelets with these bar codes to intimidate them, to scare them into remaining on these buses until they arrive in New York City."
The Hill noted that Abbott has been busing migrants from the southern border to New York City and Washington, D.C., to protest President Joe Biden's immigration policies. Five busloads arrived in New York City on Wednesday morning.
About 237 people were subjected to a bar coded security system not seen in the city before, according to CBS2.
The video shows an unidentified man cutting off the wristbands as the migrants get off the bus in New York City.
"We know that Gov. Abbott has been trying to dehumanize people, trying to foment anti-immigrant hatred, and while New York will continue to welcome asylum seekers, it's also our moral responsibility to denounce this kind of behavior by Gov. Abbott," Castro said.
A spokesperson for Abbott told CBS2 the wristbands are "standard protocol" by the Texas Division of Emergency Management. They help to make sure that the state is transporting migrants who have been processed and released by the federal government, according to the spokesperson.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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