Republicans are ramping up their use of grotesque, anti-immigrant political stunts. After months of busing migrants to the nation’s capital and other sanctuary cities as a kind of depraved protest against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday said he sent two more buses of over 100 migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s home in Washington, D.C.

“We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job & secure the border,” Abbott wrote in a tweet Thursday morning, as videos emerged showing a large group of migrants standing outside the United States Naval Academy.

The move from Abbott came a day after Florida’s Ron DeSantis took credit for sending two planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. About 50 people were on the planes, according to a local state senator, who said Massachusetts officials were apparently given no warning. “The island scrambled to respond,” Democrat Julian Cyr told CNN, adding that officials set up shelter within hours on Wednesday and quickly provided the migrants with meals and COVID tests. “We have the governor of Florida…hatching a secret plot to send immigrant families like cattle on an airplane,” Dylan Fernandes, another state senator representing Martha’s Vineyard, told NPR. “It is an incredibly inhumane and depraved thing to do."

For months, Abbott and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey have been busing migrants from the border to Washington, D.C. That, along with what local organizers describe as a lack of support from Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, has forced everyday citizens to accommodate the influx of immigrants and refugees. “We’re crowdfunding a resettlement effort,” as one local organizer told me in August. Other sanctuary cities, including New York City and Chicago, have also received buses in recent weeks. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday issued an emergency declaration to access additional resources for the hundreds of migrants who have arrived in the state and accused Abbott of failing to collaborate with his administration. “While other states may be treating these vulnerable families as pawns,” Pritzker said, “here in Illinois we are treating them as people.”

In a statement Wednesday, the Florida governor’s office blasted “sanctuary states” for “incentivizing illegal immigration." However, many of the migrants GOP governors have sent to sanctuary cities or states are not in the country illegally; a significant swath are legal asylum-seekers fleeing desperate situations, only to find themselves being used as political pawns by the GOP. It may be true that border crossings have surged this year, but the reasons for that are complex, as The Wall Street Journal reported last month: Some of the uptick appears to have stemmed from the apparent leniency of Biden’s border policies relative to his predecessor. But the spike in border crossings is also COVID-related, as the Journal notes: Latin America suffered more under the pandemic than any other region, leading migrants to seek opportunity in the U.S., where the economy has recovered more quickly. Moreover, Donald Trump’s still-active Title 42 rules — the pandemic-era policy that Biden has sought to end — appear to have contributed to a rise in repeat crossings, according to the Journal.

Needless to say, while it’s true that the federal government has treated immigration reform as something of a political hot potato, what's driving the uptick in border crossings is more complicated than Biden's policies or sanctuary cities, despite what Abbott, Ducey, and DeSantis claim. And though sanctuary cities like Chicago and Massachusetts should open their arms to the migrants, bussing them to such safe havens without advance notice — and little to no coordination — is dangerous and inhumane. “Even for Ron DeSantis, this is a new low,” Florida Democratic Chair Manny Diaz said of the governor in a statement. “There is nothing that DeSantis won’t do, and nobody that he won’t hurt, in order to score political points.”

Unsurprisingly, the governors' stunts — which harken back to ugly Civil Rights-era tactics — have earned plaudits among conservative lawmakers and pundits on Fox News. But they have also thrust an already vulnerable population into greater uncertainty. “I don’t know what is going to happen to us,” a migrant told NPR after arriving in Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday. “The truth is I am worried…We’re here now and there’s nothing we can do.”