US President Joe Biden’s administration is planning the widescale expulsion of Haitian migrants from a small Texas border city by putting them on on flights to Haiti starting today, an official said on Friday.
Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano on Friday declared a state of emergency after more than 10,000 undocumented migrants, many of them Haitians, poured into the city.
The migrants were crowded in an area controlled by the US Customs and Border Patrol beneath the Del Rio International Bridge, which carries traffic across the Rio Grande river into Mexico, Lozano said.
Photo: AFP
Video footage showed thousands under and around the flyover: adults and families.
Details have yet to be finalized, but the expulsion would likely involve five to eight flights a day, said the official, who had direct knowledge of the plans, but was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Another administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, expected two flights a day at most and said that all migrants would be tested for COVID-19.
Hundreds of people continued to flow into Del Rio on Friday, boosting up the number that Lozano put at 10,503 under the bridge late on Thursday.
All were awaiting processing — and hopefully a chance to remain in the US — by the Customs and Border Patrol, which has been overwhelmed by migrants crossing the border from Mexico, as well as tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan.
“The border patrol right now is so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants in the Del Rio sector,” Lozano said.
The White House remained silent on the issue as political pressure mounted on Biden to address the influx.
Both Republicans and Democrats called for quick action from Biden, whose administration recorded and mostly expelled more than 200,000 migrants at the border in July and last month, the highest numbers in more than a decade.
Some said Biden’s decision in late July — after Haitian president Jovenel Moise’s assassination — to allow Haitians without US visas at the time to remain in the country offered an incentive for others to come.
Lozano’s emergency declaration said the city expected thousands more migrants in the coming weeks and they were taking a toll on city resources and heightened the COVID-19 danger.
The declaration allows the city to request federal financial aid, and it also called on the state to deploy law enforcement officials to help with the situation.
In a statement, the Customs and Border Patrol said it was sending extra personnel and resources.
“To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site, while migrants wait to be taken into Border Patrol custody,” it said.
It said the “vast majority” of single migrants and many of the families would be expelled under the government’s Title 42 policy curtailing immigration due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional reporting AP
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