Immigration Crisis: Haitians leave the Mexican-American border

The U.S. government and AFP journalists said all Haitian immigrants who had gathered on either side of the US-Mexico border had left their makeshift camp.

The last immigrants who had camped for a week in Ciudad Acuna on the northern border of Mexico withdrew after not returning to the United States, the AFP noted Friday evening. They got into vans with their belongings and took them to shelters.

Earlier in the day, Alejandro Mayorkas, the US Secretary of State for Homeland Security, told a news conference in the White House that “there are no immigrants in the camp under the bridge today,” as many as 15,000 people, including many Haitians, were killed last weekend in the town of Del Rio, Texas.

Nearly 2,000 were deported to Haiti on the plane, 8,000 returned voluntarily to Mexico, 5,000 were transferred to asylums, and 12,400 were able to leave the site and have to report to an immigration judge to defend their asylum application, he said.

“Many will be sent back to Haiti,” he added.

Fix the problem at the source

In Ciudad Acuna, on the other hand, Filipe Basulto, secretary of the municipal council, assured that immigrants would not be arrested or deported to the city’s dormitories and that they could roam around the city “with confidence” while waiting. Their condition must be corrected.

A few hours ago, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lపెpez Obrador announced that he did not want his country to become an “immigration camp”.

“We want to solve problems by source,” he said, calling on the United States to invest in the economic development of Central American countries so that their inhabitants no longer have to flee from poverty.

Inhuman or sloppy

In all, 30,000 immigrants, mostly Haitians, have arrived in the small town on the Texas border since Sept. 9, living in hot and unhygienic conditions after crossing Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuna. .

The influx of these immigrants and the treatment faced by some, as police officers were pushed back on borders on horses as they crossed the river, drew criticism from the Biden administration, which the government considered inhumane. Is good.

In a photo taken Sunday by an AFP photographer, a border guard on horseback grabbed a T-shirt of a man on American shores. On the other, he puts a group on his back, in a threatening pose, forcing them to turn back.

These photos, which have traveled around the world, caused a stir in America.

Some saw immigrants there as cattle, while others recalled the abuse of African Americans by police, prison guards or slave owners.

Is embarrassing

Joe Biden, who has yet to speak publicly on the matter, assured Friday that these agents would “pay” for these “defamatory” actions.

U.S. officials have already begun an investigation and have temporarily suspended border police operations mounted around Del Rio.

When asked about his responsibility in this “chaos” at the border, Joe Biden replied on Friday: “Of course I take responsibility. I am the president. It’s terrible. […] To see people behaving that way. “

“It was embarrassing,” he said before recovering. “It’s more than embarrassing. It’s dangerous. It’s not. It’s sending the wrong message to the world, the wrong message to us.”

“This is not who we are,” the Democrat promised during his campaign to deal with immigration issues with humanity, separating himself from Donald Trump, who swore only by repression and wall construction on the border.

Democratic leftists have condemned the deportation of Haitians to a country mired in political, security and humanitarian crisis, while criticizing the fatigue of officials calling for air on the right frontier.