[ad_1]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers attempt to contain migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, to Del Rio, Texas on Sunday, September 19, 2021 (AP Photo / Felix Marquez)
DEL RIO, Texas (AP) – Options narrowed on Tuesday for thousands of Haitian migrants straddling the Mexico-Texas border as the United States government stepped up deportation flights to Haiti, and Mexico has started taking flights and buses away from the border.
Dozens of migrants unhappy at being deported to Haiti tried to rush on a plane that landed in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday afternoon as they shouted at authorities. A security guard closed the plane’s door in time as some deportees started throwing stones and shoes at the plane. Several of them lost their belongings in the fight when the police arrived. The group was disembarking from one of the three flights scheduled for the day.
More than 6,000 Haitians and other migrants have been removed from an encampment in Del Rio, Texas, US officials said on Monday as they defended a firm response that included the immediate deportation of migrants to their impoverished Caribbean country and faced criticism for using horse patrols to prevent them from entering the city.
This was enough for some Haitian migrants to return to Mexico, while others struggled to decide which side of the border to try their luck.
Jean Claudio Charles, 34, his wife and their 1-year-old son were stretching at dawn on Tuesday after sleeping on cardboard in a riverside park with 300 others who chose to return to Mexico from the US side , some for fear of deportees and others for lack of food.
Charles said he did not want to leave the area, which is gradually becoming a new camp on the Mexican side, for fear of arrests.
“They catch people, they disturb us, especially Haitians because they identify us by skin,” he said.
But thousands of people remain in the camp in Texas. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, during a visit to Del Rio on Tuesday, said the county’s top official told him the most recent tally was around 8,600 migrants who remained there. He continued to criticize the Biden administration and expressed skepticism that the area would soon be cleaned up.
“They have shown no ability to process all of these migrants by the end of the week,” Abbott said. “The only thing they’ve shown is an inability to deal with this crisis, frankly in a way that they pretend it doesn’t even exist. We’re here to tell you, it exists, it’s total chaos, and the Biden administration, they need to improve their game a lot.
About six dozen officers from the US Bureau of Prisons were in place Tuesday near Del Rio, according to three people familiar with the matter. Officers primarily help U.S. Customs and Border Protection transport migrants on Bureau of Prisons buses between detention centers and from the Del Rio Bridge, residents said. People were unable to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
On Monday, the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, admitted that it was a “difficult and heartbreaking situation”, but issued a stern warning: “If you come to the United States illegally , you will be fired. Your trip will not be successful and you will endanger your life and that of your family.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday that he had spoken with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about the situation of Haitians. Ebrard said most Haitians already had refugee status in Chile or Brazil and most did not seek it in Mexico.
“What they are asking is to be allowed to cross Mexico freely into the United States,” Ebrard said.
Mexico has also started flying and transporting migrants from Ciudad Acuña to southern Mexico to relieve pressure on this stretch of border, according to two Mexican federal officials who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak. in public.
One of the officials said three buses full of migrants left Acuña on Tuesday morning for Piedras Negras, about 90 kilometers from the border, where they boarded a flight to the southern town of Villahermosa, in the state of Tabasco. .
The other official said there was a flight on Monday between the city of Monterrey in the north and the town of Tapachula in the south, near the Guatemalan border. Tapachula is home to the largest immigration detention center in Latin America. The flight was carrying around 100 migrants who had been picked up around the Monterrey bus station, a hub for various routes north of the US border.
The second official said the plan was to move all Haitians who had previously applied for asylum in Mexico to Tapachula, as most of them have reportedly applied for asylum in Tapachula and they can only legally stay in Mexico for the treatment of their case if they stay in the south. .
Haitian migrants who are already in detention centers in Mexico and have not sought asylum will be the first to be transported directly to Haiti once Mexico begins these flights, according to the official.
Meanwhile, Mayorkas and U.S. Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz said on Monday they would investigate mounted agents using what appeared to be whips and their horses to push migrants back on the river between Acuña and Del Rio, a town of about 35,000 people about 145 miles (230 kilometers) west of San Antonio where thousands of migrants remain encamped around a bridge.
Later Monday, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement calling the footage “extremely disturbing” and promising a full investigation that “would define the appropriate disciplinary action to be taken.”
Mayorkas said 600 homeland security workers, including coast guards, were brought to Del Rio. He said he asked the Department of Defense for help with what may be one of the fastest, largest-scale deportations of migrants and refugees from the United States in decades.
He also said the United States would increase the pace and capacity of flights to Haiti and other countries in the hemisphere. The number of migrants on the bridge peaked at 14,872 on Saturday, said Brandon Judd, chairman of the National Border Patrol Council, a union that represents officers.
The swift deportations were made possible by a pandemic-related authority adopted by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 that allows migrants to be immediately deported from the country without the ability to seek asylum. President Joe Biden exempted unaccompanied children from the order but left the rest in place.
Any Haitian who is not deported is subject to immigration laws, which include the right to seek asylum and other forms of humanitarian protection. Families are quickly released in the United States as the government generally cannot detain children.
Haitians have migrated to the United States in large numbers from South America for several years, many having left their Caribbean countries after a devastating earthquake in 2010. After jobs have dried up since the Olympic Games d he summer of 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, many made the dangerous journey by foot, bus and car to the US border, including through the infamous Darien Gap, a Panamanian jungle.
Some migrants from Del Rio camp said the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse made them fearful of returning to a country that seemed more unstable than when they left.
“It’s not good,” said Haitian migrant Jean Philipe Samus. “The Americans seize the Haitians and deport everyone to Haiti. Haiti has no president, no jobs, there is nothing. In the earthquake, many people died. It’s not just there, I’m going back to Mexico.
But Mayorkas has defended his recent decision to grant Haitians temporary legal status due to political and civil unrest in their country if they were in the United States on July 29, but not those returned now.
“We did an assessment based on the conditions of the country… that Haiti could in fact receive individuals safely,” he said.
[ad_2]
Source link