Greg Abbott escalated his cruel border stunt this week, sending a chartered flight of around 100 asylum-seekers on Tuesday to Chicago—the host city of the 2024 Democratic National Convention that has struggled to keep up with an influx of migrants the Texas governor has been bussing in for more than a year.

On Wednesday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson condemned Abbot for working to “create chaos” in Chicago and other sanctuary cities. Chaos has intensified in Chicago in recent months, straining the city’s resources, testing its commitment to its sanctuary city status, and exposing fault lines between Democratic leaders—including Johnson and fellow progressive Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who shut down construction on the mayor’s planned winterized migrant tent camp earlier this month after an environmental report found contaminated soil at the southwest side site.

More than 25,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since Abbott began his bussing program in protest of President Joe Biden’s border policies, which he claims are too lenient. At one point in the fall, more than 3,000 migrants were sheltering in police stations and airports here as the city scrambled to keep up with the pace of Abbott’s buses. “We just can’t get in front of it,” said Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, in October.

Those police stations are now empty for the first time in months as churches take in more migrants, Johnson announced last week. “I am grateful to the city workers, faith leaders, and everyone working toward this stage in the new arrivals mission,” the mayor said. But the death of a five-year-old migrant Sunday after suffering a medical emergency in a shelter in the Pilsen neighborhood has raised significant concerns about conditions in the facilities—especially as more people at the shelter fall ill and volunteers, who have helped lead the effort to welcome migrants, say the shelters lack transparency.

Abbott’s escalation came just days after the five-year-old’s death and weeks after Chicago began cracking down on buses operating without a permit or dropping off arrivals at random locations throughout the city without notice. “They are just dropping people off anywhere,” Johnson said Monday, weeks after the city began impounding buses operating without a permit or dropping off arrivals outside approved landing zones. “Do you understand how raggedy and evil that is?”

The Texas governor’s office described the plane as a retaliation against Johnson’s bus-impounding policy: “Because Mayor Johnson is failing to live up to his city’s ‘Welcoming City’ ordinance by targeting migrant buses from Texas,” an Abbott spokesman said, “we are expanding our operation to include flights to Chicago.”

The move is just the latest hardline immigration measure from Abbott; on Monday, the Texas governor signed a bill that would allow law enforcement to arrest migrants if they suspect them of having crossed the border without authorization. “Yet again, Governor Abbott is showing how little regard or respect he has for human beings,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement. “This latest political stunt just adds to his tally of extreme policies which seek to demonize and dehumanize people.”