All the Haitian migrants who gathered on both sides of the US-Mexico border have left their makeshift camps, according to the US government and AFP journalists at the site.
The last migrants who had been camping for a week in Ciudad Acuna, on Mexico’s northern border, withdrew after failing to return to the United States, AFP noted Friday night. They got into trucks with their belongings and took them to shelters.
A little earlier, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mallorcas, announced during a press conference at the White House that “today we have no more immigrants in the camp under the bridge” in the town of Del Rio, Texas, which has doubled to 15,000 people, including many Haitians, on the weekend of last week.
He said about 2,000 people were deported by plane to Haiti, 8,000 voluntarily returned to Mexico, 5,000 were taken to shelters, 12,400 people have managed to leave the site and will have to report to an immigration judge to defend their asylum claim.
“Many will be sent back to Haiti,” he added.
Solve the problem from the source
In Ciudad Acuna, on the other hand, the Secretary of the Municipal Council, Felipe Basulto, assured that immigrants in the city’s accommodation centers would not be arrested or expelled, and that they could move around the city “with confidence” while they waited. their condition to be repaired.
A few hours ago, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that he did not want his country to become a “migrant camp”.
“We want to address the problems from the source,” he added, calling on the United States to invest in the economic development of Central American countries so that their residents do not have to escape poverty.
Inhuman or lenient
In total, according to Mayorcas, 30,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, have arrived since September 9 in a small town on the Texas border, where they were living in heat and in unsanitary conditions after crossing the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuna. .
This massive influx of immigrants and the treatment of some, which police officers on horseback drove to the border as they crossed the river, drew criticism from the Biden administration, which the government considers inhumane. Right.
In a photo taken by an AFP photographer Sunday, a horseback border guard grabs a man by his shirt on an American beach. On the other hand, he keeps a group at bay by managing the reins, in a situation that threatens them, to force them to turn back.
These photos, which toured the world, caused an uproar in the United States.
Some saw immigrants there treated like cattle, and others remembered the mistreatment of African Americans by mounted police, prison guards, or slave owners.
An embarrassment
Joe Biden, who has not yet spoken publicly on the subject, promised Friday that these agents will “pay” for these “scandalous” actions.
US authorities have already opened an investigation and temporarily suspended detailed border police operations around Del Rio.
When asked about his share of the responsibility in this “chaos” on the border, Joe Biden replied Friday: “Of course I take responsibility. I’m the president. It was terrible. […] To see people treated this way.”
“It’s embarrassing,” he said before recovering. “It’s more than embarrassing. It’s dangerous. It’s bad. It’s sending the wrong message to the world, the wrong message to us.”
“It’s not who we are,” said the Democrat, who during his campaign promised to deal with immigration issues humanely, to distinguish himself from Donald Trump, who has vowed to crack down and build only a border wall.
The democratic left denounces the expulsion of Haitians to a country mired in a political, security and humanitarian crisis, while the right, for its part, condemns the laxity of the authorities that would provoke an air call on the southern border.
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