DEL RIO, Texas — A giant camp here in this small border city is now almost a fourth the size it was, with roughly 4,000 mostly Haitian migrants living and sleeping under the international bridge, government officials said Thursday.
Meanwhile, with each get-tough measure aimed at the wave of newly arrived asylum seekers by the federal government and the State of Texas, there is a backlash.
Thursday morning, the Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti resigned, protesting “inhumane, counterproductive” expulsions of Haitian migrants back to that island-nation which has been rocked by civil strife and natural disasters. Daniel Foote, the envoy, had only been in his post since July after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Haiti’s president. He cited armed gangs as part of daily life there.
“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own,” he said.
The Biden administration also has told U.S. border officials to suspend patrols by agents on horseback in the Del Rio sector, after images emerged last weekend showing a Border Patrol agent chasing migrants in an apparent attempt to push them back into the Rio Grande. The agent appeared to be swinging his horse’s reins in the air.
The change, announced by Jen Psaki, the White House spokeswoman, comes days after The White House expressed horror at the images. An internal investigation is under way.
Foote’s resignation comes as the U.S. federal government placed more than 1,000 Haitians on daily flights back to Haiti. Many left the island nation years ago after earlier strife, including the massive 2010 earthquake that killed at least 200,000 people. Many fled then to places such as Brazil and Chile, where the coronavirus has recently led to economic suffering that prompted them to head to the U.S.
By Thursday, some Haitians, learning of the airplane expulsions, had started fleeing back into the Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña across the Rio Grande. It was unclear how many were in that city’s hotels and an encampment there. Most will presumably seek another opportunity to enter the U.S.
Guerline Jozef, the president of the advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said Thursday that her group supported Foote’s decision against the expulsion of thousands of Haitians back to Haiti. “Black asylum seekers need compassion, not an endless cycle of inhumane and careless treatment,” she said in a statement. Jozef has been in Del Rio meeting with Haitians for the past week.
A growing number of immigration advocacy groups, including the Haitian Bridge Alliance, have called for the end of expulsions of Haitians under a COVID-19-related public health order known as Title 42 that was issued by the Trump administration and kept in place by the Biden administration. Those groups charge that Title 42′s quick expulsions violate the due process rights of migrants, especially those seeking asylum in the U.S.
Wade McMullen, a lawyer with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights nonprofit in D.C., called the camp “a black box” and said lawyers need to have access to the asylum-seekers to let them know of their rights.
“First and foremost the U.S. needs to stop the mass expulsions,” McMullen said outside a Del Rio respite center for newly arrived migrants. “The asylum-seekers are not the crisis. The militarized response is the crisis.”
Thursday, Kerry Kennedy, president of RFK Human Rights and daughter of the slain U.S. senator, arrived for a short visit at the center to see conditions firsthand.
A steady caravan of state troopers in black vehicles could be seen making their daily trek into Del Rio from Uvalde on rural Highway 90 where a sea of mesquite trees stretches across the horizon. Many are staying an hour away from Del Rio, where hotels are saturated with law enforcement and media. Those troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard are part of the huge presence ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for reelection, to block further mass border crossings.
The federal government, which has also sent additional help to the area to quickly process and release or deport the migrants, has not said how many have crossed since the migrants began swimming the Rio Grande en masse a few weeks ago. But, even with migrants coming and going from the camp alone, at one point nearly 15,000 were there.
The sprawling camp is marked by squalor and poor sanitary conditions with people sleeping outside on the ground, or in tents in the heat. Though it has shrunk in size, it’s still twice as large as a camp of migrants that sprung up in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, two years ago.
Abbott has blamed the Biden administration for “promoting and allowing open border policies” that led to the huge influx of Haitians and others in this small border city of 35,000.
In Del Rio, after being released by federal agents or otherwise making their way, many Haitian families, including pregnant women, arrive at bus stations, the small airport and the respite center run by a faith-based nonprofit, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition.
Some at the respite center wore bulky black government-issued ankle monitors and others carried manila envelopes with documents given to them by the Department of Homeland Security instructing them to report to a sister agency within 60 days of reaching their final destination. Many already have family in the U.S.
Gurlandine Josapha waited with her 6-year-old daughter and her husband to catch a van ride north. Like many others, she had fled Haiti after the 2010 earthquake rattled the already rickety economy. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit their new South American home hard, too, and they left.
“Chile is a little complicated,” she said. “When you work without documents the money you earn isn’t enough. We pay so much for the electricity and the rent, it just doesn’t stretch far enough.”
Suddenly her little girl Layla shouted at her mother, “ya vamos,” let’s go. They had to catch their ride north.
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