Something many people have criticized as a political stunt playing out elsewhere in the country arrived in Southern California starting in mid-June.

A busload of 42 migrants from Texas landed in Los Angeles, dispatched with little warning by Texas authorities as part of a continuing protest against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

Los Angeles officials condemned the move Mayor Karen Bass said Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was using the migrants “as pawns in his cheap political games” but promised to help them find shelter and food, and to arrange for them to travel to meet loved ones.

The buses have kept coming. The fifth one arrived over the weekend, bringing the number of people dropped off in Los Angeles from the Lone Star State to 199, according to Bass’ office.

That’s in addition to at least 36 migrants flown to Sacramento last month, a plan that California officials believe was organized by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in what appeared to be a similar attempt at making a political statement.

Some migrants who have been transported to California in recent weeks wanted to come, to reunite with relatives. But not all of them seemed entirely willing to head west, or were aware of exactly what was happening, according to Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which has been helping the arriving migrants.

Cabrera said some passengers on the buses were as young as 6 months old, some were older adults and some had made the 30-hour-plus ride without any food.

“Sadly, the politics of a few are endangering many,” Cabrera said.

The sending of migrants to blue states from red ones has become familiar in recent months.

Last fall, DeSantis directed two planeloads of South American migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, the Democratic-leaning island in Massachusetts. The same Florida program appears to have solicited asylum-seekers in Texas and sent them without apparent notice to Sacramento in June. (This month, Democratic leaders in California and Texas urged the Justice Department to investigate the program.)

As of July 10, Texas had bused over 25,000 migrants to New York City, Denver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities, according to Abbott. “The busing mission provides critical relief to overwhelmed and overrun border towns,” he wrote on Twitter.

Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services, said California didn’t have its own tally of how many migrants had recently been dispatched to the state, in large part because they were not coming through official channels and could be difficult to track.

He added that the arrivals were straining social safety-net programs needed to serve migrants who enter California through its own border with Mexico, as well as California residents who struggle with a lack of housing or mental health issues.

“It stresses these systems that are already spread so thin to provide vital services to vulnerable Californians,” Ferguson said.

The migrants who arrive in Los Angeles are greeted by social service workers and nonprofit groups that administer COVID tests, provide clothing, food and showers and help them contact relatives who live in the region.

Most of the migrants seek asylum, with the largest proportion from Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or China, Cabrera said. Most who have come to Los Angeles have relatives in the West, including Oakland, San Diego, Seattle or Reno, and hope to stay with them, he said. A few lack such connections, though, and it’s unclear why they ended up on the bus, he said.

“Los Angeles has been preparing for this eventuality for many, many months, and that’s helped with minimizing the chaos that a sudden arrival of 40 migrants can mean,” Cabrera said. “We can respond with dignity and respect to the needs of these migrants.”