Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake 'not a fan' of migrant buses to blue cities

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said on Friday that she is “not a fan” of southern governors busing migrants to Democratic-led cities like Washington D.C. and New York City.

Lake, who recently won the GOP primary in Arizona with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, said the buses should take illegal immigrants back to the U.S.-Mexico border instead.

“I’m not a fan of bussing people here illegally into other cities,” Lake said during a discussion on illegal immigration at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.  

“It makes for a cute photo-op, but it just takes people who shouldn’t be here and moves them further in,” she added.

“I think we should bring the buses and drive them to the border and then send them back the other way.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, began sending migrants who arrived at the southern border to Washington D.C. in April after months of inaction from the Biden administration.

The move was designed to send a message to White House officials and members of Congress so the burden didn’t fall entirely on their states in the southwest.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested the National Guard’s help to manage the influx of migrants crowding the city’s homeless shelters.

Abbott announced Friday that he had sent his first busload of asylum seekers to New York City, as its mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, had previously accused him of doing. The Texas governor denied it at the time, placing the blame for the city’s influx of illegal immigrants on secret flights chartered by the Biden administration.

The governors’ offices pointed to the Democratic mayors complaints appeals to the White House for federal support for the new arrivals as a sign their tactic was working.

“Now that big city East Coast mayors are being confronted with the ripple effects of a border security and humanitarian crisis, maybe something will get done,” CJ Karamargin, communications director for Gov. Ducey, said in late July.

A former news anchor, Lake earned Trump’s endorsement by supporting his claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.

She has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of her campaign, telling Just The News in March that she would declare the border crisis an “invasion” to protect Arizonians from “imminent danger” if elected.