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Thousands of Haitian migrants who fled the makeshift settlement of Del Rio, Texas, rather than being deported to their countries of origin this week, have reportedly chosen to keep a low profile in Mexico as they prepare for a another attempt to cross to the United States.
The Daily Mail reported on Friday that some migrants who had left the camp under the Del Rio International Bridge were seen buying bus tickets in the border town of Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, which would take them to major centers. transportation like Mexico City and Monterrey. Some bought tickets to Nogales, a city on the Mexican border that adjoins a city of the same name in Arizona.
“They fled over this river [Rio Grande] and ran. Hundreds and hundreds of them that I have seen. I’ve personally seen it, ”said Todd Bensman, senior national security researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies. “They told me they were fleeing because of the eviction flights.
“If you can just find a way to stay in Mexico, the deportation mania will pass and they’ll walk through quietly somewhere else where there is no media and no camp,” Bensman told the Daily Mail. “They’re just going to wait another day and then they’ll cross. So if the administration is never able to account for 5,000 more, there is only one explanation.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at the White House on Friday that about 8,000 migrants returned to Mexico “voluntarily” after the Biden administration began cleaning up the encampment on Sunday. Mayorkas added that another 2,000 migrants had been repatriated to Haiti – a country many of them had not lived in for more than a decade – on 17 deportation flights.
A man told the Daily Mail that his wife and child were taken aboard one of the planes while shopping for food in Ciudad Acuña.
“She called me on the phone [from Port-au-Prince], “the man said.” I’m not taking this well. “
Luxon, a 31-year-old Haitian migrant who hid his last name out of fear, told The Associated Press he was leaving Ciudad Acuña with his wife and son for Mexicali, about 900 miles west along from the border between Mexico and California.
“The option was to go to a place where there are not a lot of people and ask for documents to be legal in Mexico,” he said.
Mayorkas said nearly 30,000 migrants had been met in Del Rio since September 9, with as many as 15,000 under bridge at a time. In addition to those who were deported to Haiti and retreated to Mexico, 12,400 others have been released in the United States to wait for their court cases to be heard by immigration judges. The secretary added that “just over 5,000” are held by DHS and being processed to determine whether they will be deported or allowed to assert their legal residency claim.
Mayorkas did not explain a gap of around 2,600 between the overall number of migrants encountered and the number dispersed over the past 15 days.
“They know how many came with certainty because they gave a ticket, a numbered ticket to every Haitian who entered and they recorded it in a book. So they certainly know how many came in, ”Bensman explained. “If they can’t explain four or five thousand, there’s only one explanation for that and that’s how much [also] fled to Mexico.
He added that after their experience in Del Rio, many migrants were likely to put their fate in the hands of cartels or human smugglers known as “coyotes”.
Asked Friday about the situation in Ciudad Acuña, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said: “We don’t want Mexico to be a migrant camp, we want the problem to be fully addressed.”
Del Rio mayor Bruno Lozano said the bridge will not reopen until Sunday evening at the earliest, as authorities finish cleaning up the site and making sure no one is hiding in the brush along the river.
Officials also want to ensure that no other large group of migrants travel to the Del Rio area and may decide to set up a similar camp, he said.
Lozano added that there were no deaths during the period of occupation of the camp and that 10 babies were born to migrant mothers, either at the camp or at the hospital in Del Rio.
With post wires
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