‘BIBLICAL’ EXODUS AS HUMAN TRAGEDY UNFOLDS
TEXAS CITY: Border officers mounted on horseback and cracking whips confronted hundreds of migrants trying to join thousands more who have crossed into the US from Mexico in recent days.
Border officials appeared powerless to stop as many as 16,000 Haitians crossing the waist-deep Rio Grande river at the weekend. The migrants have since established a squalid camp under a bridge near the Texan border city of Del Rio.
In need of supplies, and unable to buy them on the US side of the river, many spent the weekend wading between the two sides of the border, hauling bags full of food, clothes and medicines.
The Biden administration began putting some of the Haitians on flights to their homeland, in what is one of the country’s biggest expulsions in decades.
A group of 327 were returned to the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, on three flights, with a further six flights scheduled to leave San Antonio, about 250km from Del Rio, on Tuesday. About 12,000 people will be expelled in the coming days.
Many Haitians have expressed anger and fear at being sent back to their destitute country, where living conditions have deteriorated sharply. Most of them had fled Haiti many years ago.