In the USA, President Joe Biden is coming under increasing pressure because of the thousands of Haitian migrants in the border town of Del Rio – they are now to be flown back to their homeland more and more. The US Department of Homeland Security said that additional transport is being procured to increase the speed and capacity of flights to Haiti and other destinations in the region within the next 72 hours. In addition, additional border guards should be sent to the city in the US state of Texas, which borders on Mexico.
To get to the USA, more than 10,000 people, most of them from the impoverished Caribbean state, gathered under a bridge that crosses the border river Rio Grande. Mexican and US-American authorities assume that more poverty refugees from Haiti are on their way to the mass camp. The US border guards reinforced their forces in Del Rio and distributed water, towels and mobile toilets according to their own statements.
The mayor of Del Rio, Bruno Lozano, had previously requested urgent federal help. He said the migrants were mostly from Haiti, entering the country illegally and waiting to be picked up by the U.S. border protection agency. However, this is overwhelmed in view of the great rush. Lozano warned that the situation was dangerous: the coronavirus and other diseases could spread quickly through the crowd. In addition, there is a risk that there will be a mass panic or that terrorists could smuggle into the country among the migrants.
The Ministry of Homeland Security now wants to redistribute migrants to other places in the region in order to be able to process them more quickly. This is to ensure that people would be expelled if they were illegally in the United States. The White House has instructed the relevant authorities to work with Haitian and other governments in the region to provide help and assistance to the people upon their return.
In the border town of Del Rio, the refugees have set up a spartan camp along the Rio Grande.
(Photo: Eric Gay / dpa)
Lozano, the mayor of Del Rio, a city of 36,000, is a Democrat, like US President Biden. However, months ago he criticized that it was completely inadequate how the federal government was dealing with the situation on the southern border of the United States. In the past few months, the number of migrants apprehended on the border with Mexico has risen rapidly.
When Biden took office in January, he announced that he would take a more humanitarian course than his Republican predecessor Donald Trump in immigration policy. Critics now accuse him of having brought about situations like in Del Rio with his new approach. The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, announced that he would resume the construction of a border wall – one of Trump’s central projects – which had been stopped by Biden.