HOUSTON: US authorities moved some 2,000 people to other immigration processing stations from a Texas border town that has been overwhelmed by an influx of Haitian and other migrants.
Such transfers will continue “in order to ensure that irregular migrants are swiftly taken into custody, processed, and removed from the United States consistent with our laws and policy,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement.
While some migrants seeking jobs and safety have been making their way to the United States for weeks or months, it is only in recent days that the number converging on Del Rio, Texas, has drawn widespread attention, posing a humanitarian and political challenge for the Biden administration.
The DHS said that in response to the migrants sheltering in increasingly poor conditions under the Del Rio International Bridge that connects the Texas city with Ciudad Acuna in Mexico, it was accelerating flights to Haiti and other destinations within the next 72 hours.
It added it was working with nations where the migrants began their journeys for many of the Haitians, countries such as Brazil and Chile to accept returned migrants. Officials on both sides of the border said most of the migrants were Haitians.
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry expressed solidarity with the mass of migrants at the border in a series of posts on social media, saying “arrangements have already been made” to warmly receive those who return to the Caribbean nation. “I share their suffering and say to them welcome home,” he wrote.
US Customs and Border Protection was sending 400 additional agents to the Del Rio sector in the coming days, DHS said, after the border agency said that due to the influx it was temporarily closing Del Rio’s port of entry.
Del Rio’s mayor, Bruno Lozano, said that there were now just over 14,000 migrants under the bridge. On the Texas side, Haitians have been joined by Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans under the Del Rio bridge, where migrants say conditions are deteriorating.
Migrants who arrive at the border and turn themselves to officials can claim asylum if they fear being returned to their home country, triggering a long court process. The Trump administration whittled away at protections, arguing many asylum claims were false.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention public health order known as Title 42, issued under the Trump administration at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, allows most migrants to be quickly expelled without a chance of claiming asylum.
President Joe Biden has kept that rule in place though he exempted unaccompanied minors and his administration has not been expelling most families. A judge ruled on Thursday the policy could not be applied to families, but the ruling does not go into effect for two weeks and the Biden administration is appealing it in court.
The Biden administration extended temporary deportation relief to around 150,000 Haitians in the United States earlier this year. That relief does not apply to new arrivals. US officials briefly halted removals to Haiti following an August 14 earthquake.
The number of Haitian migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border has been steadily rising this year along with an overall increase in migrants. Many of the Haitians said they used to live in South America and were headed north now because they could not attain legal status or struggled to secure decent jobs.
More than a dozen Haitians in southern Mexico’s Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, said that messages in WhatsApp groups spread lies about the ease of crossing the border.
