Texas migrants camp empty as agents' tactics condemned

An aerial image shows the cleaned-up area at Del Rio, Texas, where thousands of migrants had been encamped.
(AP/Julio Cortez)
An aerial image shows the cleaned-up area at Del Rio, Texas, where thousands of migrants had been encamped. (AP/Julio Cortez)

DEL RIO, Texas -- No migrants remained Friday at the Texas border encampment where almost 15,000 people -- most of them Haitians -- had converged just days earlier seeking asylum, local and federal officials said.

It's a dramatic change from last weekend, when the number peaked as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration's policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing connecting Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico.

At a news conference Friday, Del Rio Mayor Buno Lozano called it "phenomenal news."

Many of the migrants face expulsion because they are not covered by protections recently extended by the Biden administration to the more than 100,000 Haitian immigrants already in the U.S.

Officials cited security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country as reasoning for allowing some who fled after the devastating 2010 earthquake to remain in the U.S.

The United States and Mexico appeared eager to end the increasingly politicized humanitarian situation that prompted the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti and widespread anger after images emerged of border agents maneuvering their horses to forcibly block and move migrants.

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On Friday, President Joe Biden said the way the agents used their horses was "horrible" and that "people will pay" as a result. The agents have been assigned to administrative duties while the administration investigates.

"There will be consequences," Biden told reporters. "It's an embarrassment, but it's beyond an embarrassment -- it's dangerous, it's wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world and sends the wrong message at home. It's simply not who we are."

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed Biden's concerns Friday, saying she was "outraged" by how the agents on horseback treated Haitian migrants, saying the situation "evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during the time of slavery."

"Human beings should not be treated that way," she said during an interview on "The View."

Later, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke cautiously about the pending investigation into the use of horses.

"We know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation's ongoing battle against systemic racism," he said.

Asked about the discrepancy, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden "was not prejudging an outcome. He was speaking from the heart." She said he is not interfering with any investigation.

17 FLIGHTS OUT

Mayorkas said about 2,000 Haitians have been expelled on 17 flights since Sunday, and more could be expelled in coming days under pandemic powers that deny people the chance to seek asylum.

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He said the U.S. has allowed about 12,400 to enter the country, at least temporarily, while they make claims before immigration judges to stay in the country under asylum laws or for some other legal reason. They could ultimately be denied and would be subject to removal.

Mayorkas said about 5,000 are in the department's custody and being processed to determine whether they will be expelled or allowed to press their claim for legal residency. About 8,000 migrants "decided to return to Mexico voluntarily," he said.

A U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation said six flights were scheduled to go to Haiti on Friday, with seven planned today and six Sunday, though that was subject to change. The official was not authorized to speak publicly.

In Mexico, just over 100 migrants, most of them single men, remained Friday morning in the riverside camp in Ciudad Acuna.

Overnight, dozens of families who had been there crossed back to Del Rio, Texas, after Mexican authorities left the area. With the river running higher, some Border Patrol agents helped families who were struggling to cross with children.

Some migrants also moved to small hotels or private homes in Ciudad Acuna. Authorities detained six migrants at one such location Thursday afternoon.

Luxon, a 31-year-old Haitian migrant who withheld his last name out of fear, said he was leaving with his wife and son for Mexicali, about 900 miles west along Mexico's border with California.

"The option was to go to a place where there aren't a lot of people, and there request documents to be legal in Mexico," he said.

Asked Friday about the situation in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, "We don't want Mexico to be a migrant camp, we want the problem to be addressed fully."

At the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition in Del Rio, migrants stepped off a white Border Patrol van Friday, many smiling and looking relieved to have been released into the U.S.

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A man who'd driven almost 1,500 miles from Toledo, Ohio, hoping to pick up a friend and her family wore a neon yellow vest and quietly scanned the line of Haitian migrants.

Dave, who didn't want to share his last name, didn't see them in that group.

"I feel like my friend is worth my time to come down and help," he said, explaining that he wore the vest so his friend -- a nurse whom he'd met on a humanitarian trip to Haiti over a decade ago -- would be able to spot him in the crowd when she arrived with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

"I just see it as an opportunity to serve somebody," said Dave, who considers himself a Donald Trump supporter but hates how politicized the immigration issue has become. "We have so much."

BRIDGE AT BORDER

Lozano, the Del Rio mayor, said the international bridge at the border won't reopen until Sunday night at the earliest, while officials finish cleaning up the area and ensure that nobody is hiding in the brush along the Rio Grande.

Officials also want to be sure no other large groups of migrants are making their way to the Del Rio area who might decide to set up another camp, he said.

Lozano said there were no deaths during the time the camp was occupied and 10 babies were born to migrant mothers, either at the camp or in Del Rio's hospital.

"It took an urban village at this scale to help prevent any loss of life and actually welcome the births of children here," Lozano said.

The government has no plans to stop expelling some migrants on public health grounds despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say Haitian migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.

The Trump administration enacted the policy, called Title 42, in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Biden administration has used it to justify the deportation of the Haitian migrants.

A federal judge late last week ruled that the policy was improper and gave the government two weeks to stop using it, but the Biden administration appealed.

Officials said the U.S. State Department is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously lived there to return, but it's complicated because some of them no longer have legal status there.

The humanitarian group UNICEF condemned the expulsions, saying Thursday that initial estimates show that more than two out of three migrants expelled to Haiti are women and children, including newborns.

"Haiti is reeling from the triple tragedy of natural disasters, gang violence and the covid-19 pandemic," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF's executive director, who said those sent back without adequate protection "find themselves even more vulnerable to violence, poverty and displacement -- factors that drove them to migrate in the first place."

Civil rights leader Al Sharpton, who toured the camp Thursday, vowed to "stand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner."

Information for this article was contributed by Maria Verza, Sarah Morgan, Ben Fox, Nancy Benac, Elliot Spagat and Tammy Webber of The Associated Press; by Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; and by Chris Megerian and Erin B. Logan of the Los Angeles Times.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent delivers a migrant couple to a member of a humanitarian group Friday in Del Rio, Texas, after their release from custody. Officials have allowed about 12,400 Haitians to enter the U.S., at least temporarily, while they make claims for asylum or forsome other legal reason.
(AP/Julio Cortez)
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent delivers a migrant couple to a member of a humanitarian group Friday in Del Rio, Texas, after their release from custody. Officials have allowed about 12,400 Haitians to enter the U.S., at least temporarily, while they make claims for asylum or forsome other legal reason. (AP/Julio Cortez)
A Haitian migrant father plays with his daughter Friday at an improvised refugee shelter in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico.
(AP/Fernando Llano)
A Haitian migrant father plays with his daughter Friday at an improvised refugee shelter in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. (AP/Fernando Llano)

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