U.S. hurries deportation flights for Haitian migrants in growing Texas camp

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DEL RIO – The Biden government said Saturday it would speed up deportation flights and send 400 federal agents to Del Rio to take control of an escalating crisis as thousands of mostly Haitian immigrants continued to flock to the Texan city’s border and among pathetic ones Conditions under their international conditions camped bridge.

Customs and Border Protection temporarily closed their ports of entry there late Friday and diverted international traffic 57 miles east to the nearby town of Eagle Pass.

CBP is coordinating with Immigration and Customs Services and the U.S. Coast Guard to move migrants from Del Rio to other processing locations, Homeland Security officials said in a statement Saturday. About 2,000 had already been relocated, but overnight the camp grew to more than 14,600 migrants – most Val Verde County has ever seen at once, local officials said. The DHS said it is securing additional transportation to expedite deportation flights to Haiti and other countries over the next 72 hours.

The situation in Del Rio, almost three hours west of San Antonio, came to a head this week when more than 15,000 migrants, many of them from Haiti, arrived at the border in the past few days and settled in a makeshift camp under the bridge. while they waited for CBP agents to process their applications to stay in the United States. Conditions quickly deteriorated, and Governor Greg Abbott dispatched National Guard and Department of Public Security soldiers to assist federal agents in securing the area. The number of migrants arriving there has almost doubled in recent days, said Democrat Lewis Owens, a judge for Val Verde County.

“The numbers are just overwhelming,” he said.

He said ten more buses carrying migrants arrived in the border town overnight and two more on Saturday. Most of the migrants are of Haitian origin, the rest mostly from Cuba, Venezuela and Honduras, he said.

“We have 15,000 people here and why did they come to Del Rio? They came to Del Rio and went to Del Rio because the Mexican government allowed it on the Mexican side, ”Owens said. “As far as the scale is concerned, nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

The Mayor of Acuña, Roberto De los Santos Vásquez, was not immediately available for comment.

United States MP Tony Gonzales, a Republican from San Antonio whose southern Texas border district includes Del Rio, said the Biden government’s processing of 2,000 migrants in 24 hours was a remarkable achievement and praised its decision to expedite deportation flights. He said up to 10 flights are planned from Del Rio over the next week.

But he called on the White House to swiftly adopt a controversial Trump-era policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” or the migrant protection protocols that forced migrants to wait in Mexico while pursuing their asylum procedures in the US re-implement the policy, but a series of new court rulings have directed the administration to re-implement them.

“The sooner the government can reintroduce the ‘stay in Mexico’ policy will help ease some of that stress in Del Rio, and I think the government will have no choice,” said Gonzales.

He said many of the migrants who arrived in Del Rio were originally from Haiti but fled after the country’s devastating earthquake in 2010 and lived elsewhere in Central and South America, making their quick return to Haiti difficult. He pointed to the organized nature of this recent wave of migrants, with Haitian migrants arriving in bus loads and with specific instructions via Whatsapp.

“This goes way beyond Haiti and goes way beyond Del Rio,” said Gonzales. “It’s kind of a blueprint for the next frontier community and the next foreign community to come here.”

The Biden government’s efforts on Saturday to get these migrants back quickly come as the White House continues to apply a pandemic health order, known as Title 42, to migrants quickly, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year Mexico or their home countries without the opportunity to apply for asylum. A federal judge last week prevented the Biden government from using Title 42 to expel migrant families, but held out the order for 14 days. The Biden government appealed the ruling on Friday.

“The majority of migrants continue to be expelled under Title 42 authority of CDC. Those who cannot be expelled under Title 42 and have no legal basis to remain will be placed on expedited deportation, “DHS officials said in a statement on Saturday. “The Biden government has reiterated that our borders are not open and that people should not make the dangerous journey.”

Late on Saturday the police had erected barricades on the state road towards the bridge. Parked Department of Public Safety patrol cars blocked all traffic.

Fleets of law enforcement and rescue vehicles drove around all day picking up migrants, some of whom passed out from dehydration in the camp, local officials said. At least five migrants from the Del Rio camp have given birth to hospitals in the past week, the Val Verde county judge said.

Migrants have been arriving in Del Rio in recent years, but this is the first time the city has seen so many at once, officials and residents here said. The situation here has increased tensions between those who want to help migrants and those who want to send them back immediately. A few dozen residents waving US and Trump flags, including Alma Arredondo Lynch, protested Saturday against the diversion of local resources to help migrants.

Many released migrants just pass Del Rio and take flights or charter buses to their final destinations across the country to reunite with their families already in the US

Santiago Pardo, a Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition volunteer, said he flew in from Chicago to help because he said it was his “responsibility to protect those who want protection and to treat people like people”.

“Everyone is an immigrant. For some of us it’s a generation back, for some people it’s like 20 generations back, ”he said.

Some say Del Rio is a welcoming city but simply doesn’t have the resources to take in so many migrants.

“We want to help, but at the same time we need to recognize our capabilities and capacities,” said Francisco Lopez Jr., chairman of the Republican Party of Val Verde County.

Stelin Jean, 29, has been camping under the international bridge of Del Rio with his wife, their daughter and his wife’s son since the beginning of this week. The Haitian family fled their country for Bolivia in July before heading to the United States

Jean said he hopes relatives in New York can find an immigration lawyer who can help them stay in the United States.

“I’m afraid,” said Jean. “We have two children and there is no quality of life” in Haiti.

The Caribbean island nation was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August shortly after its president was assassinated in July, the latest episode in years of political instability and unrest. The Biden government has granted a type of temporary residence permit known as temporary protection status to Haitians who arrived in the United States before May and temporarily suspended their deportation flights. Disgruntled proponents have plans to evict them again.

The Del Rio crisis sparked renewed criticism from Republicans, including Abbott, who repeatedly hammered Biden for this year’s record attempts to cross the border. Many migrants are sent back immediately under the health order, but more and more are allowed to stay in the United States pending settlement of their immigration cases.

Speaking in Fort Worth Friday, Abbott said the US Department of Defense and DHS had notified the state that many migrants are being temporarily relocated to Arizona, California and possibly Laredo to ease pressure in Del Rio.

“But one thing we do know for sure, and that is that the Biden administration has nothing but uncertainty and indecision about what exactly they are going to do,” Abbott said.

The Mayor of Del Rio, Bruno Lozano, also declared the local state of the disaster on Friday and asked the state for assistance in preventing more migrants from entering the city. He said the city of 35,000, which has seen an unprecedented surge in border attempts this year, expects an additional 8,000 migrants to arrive in the coming days.

The Del Rio sector, which comprises 47 predominantly rural counties, is the second largest CBP sector. Nearly 215,000 migrants have been arrested there since October, and Val Verde County was the first to begin prosecuting migrants for trespassing as part of a government deterrent initiative Abbott launched this summer.

Lozano did not immediately respond to a call on Saturday for comment, but told the Washington Post that the situation was “no longer sustainable or acceptable”.

“We have now [the equivalent of] a third of the population of the city of Del Rio, Texas, crammed under the international bridge, ”he said. “I thought the alarm was on on Monday, but that’s an atomic bomb alarm.”

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