US transports newly arrived migrants through Texas for immediate deportation to El Paso

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Migrants are transported from South Texas to El Paso to be deported to Mexico by border protection customs, The morning news from Dallas has learned.

Evictions concern children with their families.

The migrants, most of whom are legally seeking asylum, are airlifted to other cities after crossing the border into the Rio Grande Valley. Federal officials say migrants must be relocated to reduce overcrowding at processing facilities.

El Paso County officials and migrant advocates said on Saturday they were told they would receive up to 270 migrants per day on two separate flights from the Rio Grande Valley. But instead, many migrants are sent back across the border to Ciudad Juárez under Title 42, a public health order put in place during the Trump era that allows the government to immediately deport migrants. at the border due to the coronavirus pandemic.

CBP has not said how many people have been deported from the United States since the flights began last week, but The news learned that at least 50 had been deported to Juárez as of Thursday alone.

Landon R. Hutchens, a spokesperson for CBP, blamed overcrowding in South Texas for the evictions. He pointed out that deportations of immigrant families and single adults continue under Title 42 and apply to people crossing without permission. The Biden administration has ended the practice of deporting immigrant children who cross the border alone.

Hutchens said CBP must transport them across the state to facilities where there is the capacity to process migrants before deporting them.

The intermixing of migrants across the state and their swift deportation underscore the challenges facing the Biden administration as it attempts to take a more humanitarian approach to immigration and unravel Trump’s controversial draconian policies while insisting that the border is not open.

The move baffled an official from the Mexican state and US nonprofits who had prepared shelters in that city for the overflow.

“This is a game-changer and is of great concern,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director and founder of Annunciation House, an NGO, which had prepared to receive migrants flown by air twice a day. He said the number of migrants arriving was “not even close to what we were told is happening”.

Marisa Limon Garza, deputy director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso. said they met a family of four who said they had just left the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday and then been deported to Juárez.

“I don’t understand their logic; I can’t understand and I don’t understand the rationale, or how the rules are applied to some people and not to others, ”said Limon Garza. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

The family were among a group of 54 Central American migrants that included 15 minors, a Chihuahua state immigration official said, adding that a 5-year-old Honduran girl had been transported to the hospital with fever and fatigue.

The girl was still hospitalized on Friday evening, said Enrique Valenzuela, coordinator of the State Population Council (COESPO) in northern Chihuahua, which oversees and coordinates aid to migrants awaiting passage to the United States. United.

“This is the first time that I know that we have received people under title 42 who were sent here after being stopped at a far border, people who had crossed to Reynosa, McAllen, thousands of miles away and deported here, ”Valenzuela said. “This is new and really very disturbing, especially during a pandemic.”

He said US officials had not told him whether it would now be standard practice to pick up migrants in remote border areas, transport them to other border towns, and then quickly deport them. He said the Juarez shelters are operating at or near full capacity, and called the days and weeks ahead “very difficult, very complicated”.

Hutchens, spokesperson for CBP, said officers have seen an increase in the number of migrants they encounter and “in order to treat people in the safest and fastest possible manner, the U.S. Border Patrol. Laredo, Del Rio and El Paso areas help RGV address these topics at the processing centers in their respective area.

“The border is not open and CBP is still operating under the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said, referring to Title 42.

Hutchens said he could not immediately say how many migrants were transported to El Paso from south Texas to be deported to Cuidad Juárez.

CBP has arrested and met more than 100,000 migrants at the US-Mexico border during the four weeks ending March 3, according to data released Wednesday.

Hutchens added: “It takes time to process people. We don’t know who these people are. They could be terrorists, trying to enter the country. They could be members of a drug cartel with gang affiliations with several outstanding warrants. We just don’t know and we need to know who is coming to our country illegally.

Immigration

Coronavirus calls on federal government to transfer hundreds of migrant families to El Paso and Laredo from overcrowded facilities in the valley

EL PASO – Hundreds of migrant families are airlifted from South Texas to this region by the Department of Homeland Security to help reduce pandemic-related overcrowding at facilities in the Rio Grande Valley as the flow of people crossing the border is increasing. County officials and migrant advocates in El Paso said Monday that up to two flights a day, each carrying up to 135 migrants, are expected to land here as the Biden administration begins to play a kind of musical chairs to house and maintain properly. immigrants and asylum seekers.

The Biden administration has recognized the challenges it faces as migration increases and Trump’s policies move slowly.

“It is sometimes difficult to convey both the hope for the future and the danger that exists now,” said Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and southern border coordinator, during a press briefing by the United Nations. White House last week. “And that’s what we’re trying to do. And I – I sure would agree that we’re trying to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Limon Garza and Garcia said this latest practice from the Biden administration shows that the new administration “was not ready,” nor had the appropriate infrastructure in place for the challenges along the border that members from the Border Congress, including many Republicans and Democrats. Henry Cuellar de Laredo calls it a “crisis”.

“I think the Biden administration struggled to inherit agencies and systems that were so deeply shattered by the last administration, and even administrations before that and now, it’s a confluence of events that make incredibly difficult to turn the tide. some of these wrongs and so they have to do it in real time, ”said Limon Garza. “I hope this serves as a sobering wake-up call.”

The news of the deportations comes as a delegation of Republicans led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy prepares to travel to El Paso on Monday to focus on immigration issues which Republicans are already reporting are ‘they will be at the center of their efforts to take over Congress in 2022. They seem likely to take from the playbook used by former President Donald J. Trump, which has repeatedly ignited the forces of anti-immigrant sentiment over the course of of his 2016 campaign and his four years in power.

Trump, in a scorching statement last week, warned of a “spiraling border tsunami” and predicted that “illegal immigrants from all corners of the earth will come down to our border and never be returned.

U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar D-El Paso called the delegation’s planned trip to El Paso the last “political opportunity for Republicans to demolish their base, push xenophobia, hit the border, hit Biden and to hit immigrants ”.

Local officials at the US-Mexico border are on high alert, anxious to avoid a humanitarian crisis and suspicious of tensions and hate crimes like what they witnessed on August 3, 2019, when a man from the north from Texas went to El Paso to kill Mexicans. “Stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Twenty-three people died and dozens were injured. On Saturday afternoon, hearing that families were being evicted to Juárez, the Bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, went to the border wall and prayed.

“This worries us because people are stoking these racist and xenophobic fears and putting them on migrants and asylum seekers and we know El Paso knows what that can look like,” said Limon Garza. “We know August 3. We know January 6, ”she said, referring to the date that radical Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. “It is not lost on anyone.”