Migrant camp along Texas border shrinks as removals ramp up
CIUDAD ACUÑA, MEXICO » A camp where almost 15,000 migrants had waited along the Texas border just days ago was dramatically smaller Thursday, while across the river in Mexico, Haitian migrants in a growing camp awoke surrounded by security forces as a helicopter thundered overhead.
As of Thursday, about 4,000 migrants remained under the bridge between Del Rio and Mexico, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The number peaked sharply on Saturday, as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the crossing. Food, shelter and medical care was being provided to those who need it officials said.
About 1,400 had been sent to Haiti on 13 flights, rapidly expelled under the pandemic public health authority known as Title 42, DHS officials told reporters. Another 3,200 are in U.S. custody and being processed, while several thousand have returned to Mexico, DHS officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief journalists about an ongoing operation.
Mexico’s immigration agency had estimated late Wednesday there were as many as 600 migrants in Ciudad Acuña. The riverside camp appeared to hold that many at its peak. Other migrants are scattered through the city in hotels and private homes. A city official said Wednesday that Mexican authorities had removed about 250 Haitian migrants from the city since Sunday evening. Still, “several thousand” migrants returning to Mexico from the Del Rio camp seemed an exaggeration.
The State Department is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided in those countries to return, but the issue is complicated because some no longer have legal status there, officials said.
The United States and Mexico appeared eager to end the increasingly politicized humanitarian situation, even as the U.S. expulsion of Haitians to their troubled homeland caused blowback for the administration of President Joe Biden.
The Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the “inhumane” largescale expulsions of Haitian migrants, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton said Thursday that he toured the camp and witnessed “a real catastrophic and human disgrace.” A handful of protesters, some wearing camouflage hats from former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, shouted through the entirety of Sharpton’s remarks.
“Del Rio is not a racist city. Del Rio is a loving, caring community,” one protester yelled while Sharpton spoke to reporters.
Sharpton vowed to “continue to come back ... and stand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner.”
In Mexico, migrants who had camped in a park beside the river in Ciudad Acuña found state police trucks spaced every 30 feet or so between their tents and the water’s edge. Still, after anxious minutes of indecision, dozens of families opted to hustle into the river and cross at a point where there was only one municipal police vehicle, calculating it was better to take their chances with U.S. authorities.
The entrance to the park was blocked and just outside, National Guard troops and immigration agents waited along with three buses. A helicopter flew overhead.
The camp’s usual early morning hum was silenced as migrants tried to decide what to do.
Guileme Paterson, a 36-year-old from Haiti, appeared dazed. “It is a difficult moment,” she said before beginning to cross the Rio Grande with her husband and their four children.
The Mexican authorities’ operation appeared designed to drive the migrants back across the river into Texas. A fence line and the line of state police vehicles funneled the migrants back to the crossing point they had been using all week.
The buses that had been waiting left empty. The majority of the camp’s migrants remained.
“Things are going badly,” said Michou Petion, carrying her 2-year-old son in her arms toward the river. Her husband carried bags of belongings and several pairs of sneakers dangled around his neck.
“The U.S. is deporting a lot to Haiti, now I don’t know if I can enter or leave,” Petion said.
“We’re talking to a lot of people and they are nervous, they’re afraid, they’re desperate,” said Christoph Jankhoefer of the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, which is working in the Ciudad Acuña camp.
Some Haitians are being allowed to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily to seek asylum or to stay under some other claim to residency, with notices to appear later before immigration authorities. DHS officials declined to specify the number but said they are people with particular “vulnerabilities,” which can mean they have young children or are pregnant, or because the U.S. doesn’t have capacity to hold them in detention, especially during the pandemic.
There are no plans to stop expelling other migrants under Title 42, despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.
The provision was put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the Biden administration has used Title 42 to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants.