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US government increases deportation flights to Haiti in response to the rapid arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants in a small Texan community along the border with Mexico, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement Saturday.
Thousands of migrants, many from Haiti, have crossed the southern border in recent days near Del Rio, Texas, prompting US immigration officials to settle. a makeshift processing site under an international bridge to welcome new arrivals.
As of Friday, there were more than 12,000 migrants and asylum seekers at the massive site, according to Del Rio mayor Bruno Lozano, who pleaded with the federal government to help his small town cope with an “unsustainable situation. “.
DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa said the department will “secure additional transport to accelerate the pace and increase the capacity” of deportation flights to Haiti and other countries in the Western Hemisphere within the next 72 hours. .
“We reiterated that our borders are not open and people should not be making the dangerous journey,” Espinosa told CBS News. “Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including deportation. Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and well-being of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves and should not be attempted.
Under President Biden, U.S. border officials continued to cite a public health law, known colloquially as Title 42, to quickly deport adult Mexican and Central American migrants and some families with children to Mexico.
About 87% of the more than 29,000 Haitians who entered detention at the US border in the past 11 months were treated under immigration laws and allowed to seek asylum, mainly because Mexico did not not accept their return under the Title 42 policy.
For this reason, the United States “expelled” some Haitians through direct deportation flights to Port-au-Prince. While deportations to Haiti have been suspended due to the August 14 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people, the United States resumed those flights this week.
“Suppression flights resumed after an assessment that conditions in the country had improved enough for the country to receive inbound flights,” a DHS official said.
According to the DHS official, the United States is reviewing flight manifests to ensure they do not deport Haitian immigrants who may be eligible for temporary protection status, which the Biden administration has extended to grant a deportation assistance and work permits for Haitians who were in the United States as of July 29.
However, the pressure to step up deportations is likely to anger advocates for migrants, who have said the United States should not deport people to Haiti, a country reeling from the August earthquake, political unrest exacerbated by the assassination in July of the country’s president and deep-rooted poverty.
DHS also announced on Saturday that it would deploy 400 customs and border protection officers, as well as medical technicians, to treat migrants in Del Rio. Border officials closed the Del Rio port of entry on Friday and redirected traffic to another official border crossing in Laredo, Texas.
The border patrol transported 2,000 migrants from Del Rio to other locations on Friday to process them for deportation, DHS said in a statement outlining its approach to the surge in arrivals at the border.
The strategy also includes convincing countries where the migrants originated or resided to take them back and provide assistance to those expelled, the department said.
In August, US border officials arrested Haitian migrants more than 7,500 times, a 37% increase from July. It is believed that many Haitians reaching American soil lived in Brazil, Chile and other countries in South America before deciding to head north during the coronavirus pandemic, which ravaged the economies of the region.
Before crossing through Central America, many Haitians embark on a perilous journey through the Darien Gap, a roadless jungle region near Panama’s border with Colombia.
In July, the last month with statistics available, Panama’s migration authorities recorded the meeting of 14,511 Haitian migrants who crossed the Darien Gap, the largest number of any nationality. This marked a 176% increase over June.
Panama also met 1,135 migrants from Chile and 495 from Brazil in July who officials said were South American born children of Haitians who crossed the Darien Gap.
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