Gov. Phil Murphy calls on bus companies to give notice before sending buses with migrants to N.J.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy joined the chorus of elected officials asking for prior notice before buses drop off thousands of migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Murphy sent a letter to nearly two dozen bus companies on Monday asking for charter buses carrying migrants to provide at least 32 hours’ notice before dropping them off in the Garden State. He also asked for the companies to provide various details about the passengers on the bus, such as how many single adults and families are on board, and the planned route.

These details have been a mystery to state and local officials, with buses from Texas showing up without warning. There have also been no precautions in place to ensure that the passengers reach their final destinations safely, said Murphy, a Democrat. He blamed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his efforts to send migrants arriving at the Southern border to heavily Democratic cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Denver.

» READ MORE: Suburbs, including some in N.J., are putting the brakes on migrant bus arrivals after crackdowns in Chicago and New York

More than 1,800 migrants were brought to New Jersey on dozens of charter buses over the course of the last week, Murphy said in the Monday letter.

Even though most of the passengers are headed to New York City, the buses are dropping them off in New Jersey instead due to restrictions that New York City Mayor Eric Adams put in a December executive order that limits bus drop-offs to certain times and locations, and calls for 32 hours’ notice of the arrivals. But Adams’ administration said bus companies aren’t complying with the order, anyway.

“As we continue to see more migrants arrive to our state at the hands of the governor of Texas, who is reportedly funding the passengers’ transportation with taxpayer funds, notice to New Jersey officials in advance of these individuals’ anticipated arrival is critical to ensuring the health and safety of passengers once they arrive in New Jersey,” Murphy said in a statement.

» READ MORE: A plane of migrants was diverted to PHL. Activists are preparing in case others are sent here on purpose.

Murphy will share the information with Adams’ administration “to ensure the passengers’ health and safety there,” he said.

Chicago began enforcing a similar policy to New York’s in December, towing and impounding a bus that arrived without notice or following the city’s guidelines. Buses instead began dropping off migrants in the suburbs, which have since passed similar ordinances.

Buses carrying asylum-seekers have also been sent to Philadelphia since November 2022, and the most recent one arrived nearly a month ago, on Dec. 17.

Adams is suing 17 bus companies for transporting the migrants, and all of them are listed as recipients in Murphy’s letter.

“We don’t make policies,” David Jones, an employee at Buckeye Coach LLC, one of the charter companies, told the Associated Press in response to Adams’ lawsuit. “We are just a transportation company.”

Some of the bus companies identified in Murphy’s letter did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

» READ MORE: In Texas he was offered a choice of three cities. How one immigrant ended up on a bus to Philadelphia.