CIUDAD ACUNA (Mexico), Sept 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Only a few hundred mostly Haitian migrants were left camping out under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, down from nearly 15,000 people who had converged there last week as US officials ramped up expulsions to Haiti and some releases into the United States.
Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens, who has been keeping tabs on the number of people in the camp, said there were 225 people left under the bridge that connects the United States and Mexico on Friday morning.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment but on Thursday evening had said there were 5,000 people currently in the Del Rio border sector, which would include people who had been moved to federal facilities for immigration processing.
Haitians have also set up camp on the Mexican side of the border in Ciudad Acuna, as hundreds retreated back across the Rio Grande after US officials began sending planes of people back to Haiti.
Mexican officials urged Haitians to give up hopes of seeking asylum in the United States telling them instead to return to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to request asylum in Mexico.
US President Joe Biden has faced strong criticism in recent days over the expulsions to Haiti. Rocked by the assassination of its president, gang violence and natural disasters, some 1,401 Haitian nationals have been sent back to Haiti on 12 repatriation flights since Sunday, Sep 19. The Caribbean island is the poorest in the Western hemisphere.
On Thursday, the US special envoy to Haiti quit in protest over the Biden administration’s deportations of migrants to the Caribbean nation.
That followed widespread outrage stirred up by images of a US border guard on horseback unfurling a whip-like cord against at Haitian migrants near their camp.
Most migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border can be summarily expelled under a public health order known as Title 42 that was put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic early last year.
But hundreds of other migrants, deemed particularly vulnerable or otherwise not eligible for Title 42, have been allowed into the United States to pursue their immigration claims in US court. Still others may be transferred to immigration detention, though DHS did not provide a breakdown of the diverging fates of migrants who had recently arrived in Del Rio.
Official data from Mexico show Haitians are already far less likely to have asylum claims approved in Mexico compared with many nationalities, even if their chances are starting to improve.
Last year, of all asylum claims that were formally resolved, only 22 per cent of Haitian cases won approval, compared with 98 per cent for Venezuelans, 85 per cent of Hondurans, 83 per cent of Salvadorans and 44 per cent of Cubans. So far this year, the Haitian number is up to 31 per cent.
Asylum requests have overwhelmed Mexico’s Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), which is scheduling appointments months away, if at all. Some Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said they had left Tapachula because they were so fed up with waiting. — NNN-AGENCIES
