Buses with Marin Airporter logo seen transporting migrants to NYC; company says buses had been sold

SAN RAFAEL -- A Bay Area airport shuttle service scrambled to defend itself after buses with its logo were seen among those transporting asylum-seekers from Texas to a New York City bus terminal over the weekend.

Some of the buses seen unloading the immigrants at the bus terminal appeared to be from the Marin Airporter service, which runs passengers from several Marin County stops to San Francisco International Airport.

In a statement to KPIX 5, Marin Airporter Vice President David Hughes said the buses had previously been used by the service but had been sold to another owner that failed to re-paint the buses.

"Those buses were sold to a company in Texas several months ago, and they were never repainted as they should have been," said Hughes. "We do not own or operate the buses seen in New York. We would never be a part of something like this."

The company sent out another statement later Monday, saying:

"The buses seen in national media bringing migrants to New York from Texas do not belong to the Marin Airporter. They were sold several months ago to a company in Houston, Texas, and despite repeated requests have not been repainted. It is standard in the industry for new owners to update bus paint and logos when purchasing used buses, however this obviously has not been done. Marin Airporter is deeply distressed that our name has been connected with the exploitation of vulnerable human beings."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who vowed he was "going to take the border" to the Biden administration which he accuses of lax immigration enforcement, began busing migrants from border towns to Washington, DC in April. In recent weeks, he expanded the operation to New York and Chicago. On Sept. 15, Texas started off-loading migrants near Vice President Kamala Harris' official residence in D.C. 

"We did [send them]," Abbott said to Lubbock radio station KFYO, as reported by the Tribune. "She's the border czar, and we felt that if she won't come down to see the border, if President [Joe] Biden will not come down and see the border, we will make sure they see it firsthand. ... And listen, there's more where that came from."

On Sept. 14, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican, took credit for the transportation of several dozen migrants to Martha's Vineyard, an island vacation destination off the Massachusetts coast. DeSantis said Florida will continue transporting migrants under a $12 million state program, but has not announced other destinations.  

In May, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, launched his own busing effort to transport migrants from his state to D.C. Arizona's operation has been smaller in scale than Texas' and limited to the capital. A spokesman for Ducey said there were no plans to transport migrants to other cities.