Many of border Haitians remaining, U.S. concedes

Texas Department of Safety vehicles line the bank of the Rio Grande on Wednesday near an encampment of migrants in Del Rio, Texas. The camp held more than 14,000 people, many of them Haitians, over the weekend. U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released inside the U.S. in recent days.
(AP/Julio Cortez)
Texas Department of Safety vehicles line the bank of the Rio Grande on Wednesday near an encampment of migrants in Del Rio, Texas. The camp held more than 14,000 people, many of them Haitians, over the weekend. U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released inside the U.S. in recent days. (AP/Julio Cortez)

DEL RIO, Texas -- The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday acknowledged that migrants who are not immediately expelled to Haiti may be detained or released with a notice to appear in immigration court or report to an immigration office, depending on available custody space.

The acknowledgment came in response to comments by two U.S. officials who said many Haitian migrants staying at a makeshift camp in Texas are being released in the United States, undercutting the Biden administration's public statements that the thousands of people in the camp faced immediate expulsion.

"The Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey," the Homeland Security Department said in a statement Wednesday. "Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion."

But one official said Tuesday that Haitians have been freed on a "very, very large scale" in recent days. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, put the figure in the thousands.

Many have been released with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days. Such an outcome requires less processing time from Border Patrol agents than ordering an appearance in immigration court, pointing to the speed at which authorities are moving.

[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » arkansasonline.com/923migrant/]

The releases come despite a large-scale effort to expel Haitians under pandemic-related authority that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum. A U.S. official not authorized to discuss operations said that starting Wednesday, the administration planned to send seven daily flights to Haiti.

Ten flights arrived in Haiti from Sunday to Tuesday, according to Haitian officials, who didn't provide a complete count but said six of those flights carried a total of 713 migrants.

The camp held more than 14,000 people over the weekend, according to some estimates. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday during a visit to Del Rio, where the migrants are camping under an international bridge, that the county's top official told him that the most recent tally was about 8,600 migrants.

U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released in the U.S. in recent days.

The Homeland Security Department has been busing Haitians from Del Rio to El Paso, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border, and it added flights this week to Tucson, Ariz., an official said. The migrants are processed by the Border Patrol at those locations.

Criteria for deciding who is flown to Haiti and who is released in the U.S. are a mystery. If previous handling of asylum-seekers is any guide, then the administration is more likely to release those deemed vulnerable, including pregnant women, families with young children and those with medical issues.

The Biden administration exempts unaccompanied children from expulsion flights on humanitarian grounds.

Wilgens Jean and his wife, Junia Michel, waited in Del Rio this week for relatives to send the $439 in bus fare to get to Springfield, Ohio, where Jean's brother lives. Michel, who is pregnant, huddled under the little shade the parking lot had to offer from the brutal heat.

On the concrete in front of them lay two backpacks and a black garbage bag that held everything the couple own. The pair left Haiti in April and were in the Del Rio camp for five days. Jean said that because his wife is expecting, they were released from the camp Monday.

"I entered by crossing the river," Jean said. "Immigration gave me a ticket."

About 200 migrants were released Monday in Del Rio. About 50 of them, mostly Haitian and many pregnant or with small children, boarded a bus to Houston, from where they would fly to destinations across the country. The Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition advocacy group arranged the charter bus.

Three hours after being freed from the camp, Mackenson Veillard stood outside a gas station and took stock of his sudden good fortune as he and his pregnant wife waited for a Greyhound bus to take them to a cousin in San Antonio.

The couple camped for a week under the bridge in Del Rio, sleeping on concrete and getting by on bread and bottled water.

"I felt so stressed," said Veillard, 25. "But now, I feel better. It's like I'm starting a new life."

After an initial stay with family in San Antonio, Veillard eventually hopes to get to New York City to live with his sister. He said he will take any job he can find to support his growing family.

Veillard and his wife left Haiti four years ago and had been living in Brazil until they began their journey to the U.S. in June, much of it on foot.

"I don't know how I'm going to feel tomorrow, but now I feel lucky," he said.

The accounts of releases were at odds with statements Monday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who traveled to Del Rio to promise swift action.

"If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family's life," he said at a news conference.

TEXAS' WALL OF CARS

As thousands of migrants still seek to cross the Rio Grande into the U.S., Abbott has sent a fleet of state-owned vehicles to line up for miles as a barricade along the border with Mexico, saying the state is taking "unprecedented steps."

"What we did, we put hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety cars and created a steel wall -- a steel wall of DPS vehicles -- that prevented anybody from crossing that dam that you've seen people walk across," Abbott told Fox News in an interview Tuesday. "We effectively ... regained control of the border."

Abbott has long championed the construction of a border wall in Texas, a priority of former President Donald Trump, in addition to the use of "strategic fencing."

Abbott criticized the Biden administration while insisting his state will continue to take action, including by spending $2 billion on border security.

"It has been the state of Texas that has had to step up," Abbott said Tuesday at a news conference in Del Rio. "Failure to enforce laws that exist in the United States leads to chaos, and chaos leads to inhumanity."

The Trump administration completed more than 450 miles of 18- to 30-foot steel-bollard fencing topped with anti-climbing plates along stretches of the international boundary.

But President Joe Biden has taken steps to move away from investing in the border wall. On his first day in office, he halted construction of the wall and directed his administration to study possibilities for repurposing the project's funding. However, he has signaled that enforcing the border using technology and personnel remains a priority.

LETTER TO BIDEN

The latest crisis at the border has marked a new inflection point for the Biden administration's struggles with immigration policy.

Civil- and human-rights groups on Wednesday criticized the White House's policy for inflicting "cruelty on Black, Brown and Indigenous immigrant communities," according to a letter sent by the organizations to Biden.

"We fear that commitments made on the campaign trail ... are being shredded before our eyes," said the letter. It was signed by the leaders of more than 30 groups, including Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Franciscka Lucien, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

The activists wrote that the repatriation flights confirmed "our fears that your Administration, like its predecessors, is utilizing harsh and illegal policies to attempt to deter people, particularly Black migrants, from seeking refuge at the border. Your Administration has promised to uphold tenets of racial equity, but is unleashing immigration policies infused with anti-Black racism."

The letter did not address photos and videos that emerged this week and appeared to show Border Patrol agents on horseback treating Haitian migrants harshly and attempting to force them back across the Rio Grande into Mexico.

On Wednesday, domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, senior adviser Cedric Richmond and other officials met with nine members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who tweeted that she "made it emphatically clear that those seeking asylum are not to be struck down by those on horses and that other legal rights must be protected."

Biden is facing criticism from lawmakers in both political parties for his handling of the situation in Del Rio and at the border more broadly. Authorities have been apprehending historically high numbers of migrants, statistics show. In August, migrants were stopped 208,000 times at the southern border, up from 50,000 that same month last year and 62,700 in August 2019.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement Wednesday that the administration's policies had directly resulted in the border becoming a "nightmare."

Information for this article was contributed by Elliot Spagat, Maria Verza, Juan A. Lozano, Danica Coto and Evens Sanon of The Associated Press; by Adela Suliman of The Washington Post; and by Erin B. Logan of the Los Angeles Times.

Migrants check in with a volunteer Wednesday at a humanitarian center in Del Rio, Texas, before boarding a bus to Houston. They had been released by United States Border Patrol authorities after crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in to seek asylum.
(AP/Julio Cortez)
Migrants check in with a volunteer Wednesday at a humanitarian center in Del Rio, Texas, before boarding a bus to Houston. They had been released by United States Border Patrol authorities after crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in to seek asylum. (AP/Julio Cortez)

Upcoming Events