facebooktwittertelegramwhatsapp
copy short urlprintemail
+ A
A -
webmaster
dpa
Del Rio, Texas
Facing mounting political pressure from all sides over his handling of the border, President Joe Biden on Friday said the treatment of Haitian migrants this week was “beyond an embarrassment” and “dangerous.”
Biden promised consequences after an investigation into how Border Patrol agents on horseback confronted Haitian migrants, some appearing to swing their reins like whips. Officials later suspended the use of horse patrols near the camp.
“It sends the wrong message around the world,” Biden said. “It’s simply not who we are.” Throughout history, waves of would-be refugees - Irish in the 1800s, Iraqis after the September 11 attacks, Mexicans and Central Americans for decades - have encountered both hostile and welcome receptions upon setting foot in the United States.
But few groups have endured a less enthusiastic reception than Haitians, despite the pivotal role that the United States has often played in spurring people of the impoverished Caribbean nation to jump ship in the first place, say academic experts, activists and Haitian American community members.
Advocates say those arriving now deserve more consideration.
Marleine Bastien, a longtime Haitian community activist and executive director of the Family Action Network Movement in Miami, maintains that racism and 50 years of failed US foreign policy are at the root of the country’s humanitarian crisis.
“It’s US foreign policies vis-à-vis Haiti that prioritise dictators, autocrats and corrupt leaders - some of them singlehandedly picked by the US and ignoring the plight of the Haitian people,” she said. “As long as we continue failed policies, we will see this kind of tragedy and crisis at the southern border.”
That crisis exploded this week as images of horseback-mounted Border Patrol agents chasing down desperate Haitians flashed across the world, causing both adversaries and allies of the Biden administration to condemn the treatment of innocent men, women and children fleeing an earthquake-ravaged, politically unstable country in hopes of starting over.
A makeshift camp on the banks of the Rio Grande, once filled with 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants, had emptied by Friday morning.
Homeland Security Department officials said that about two-thirds had arrived in family groups.
More than 2,000 migrants have been returned to Haiti on 17 flights since Sunday. About 12,400 people released into the US were placed in deportation proceedings and will have their cases heard by an immigration judge, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a White House news briefing. Another 5,000 migrants were being processed by DHS, he said.
An estimated 8,000 migrants abandoned the Del Rio camp and returned to Mexico, Mayorkas said. Despite the increase in Haitians at the southern US border, they represent a small share of overall border encounters. Last month, they made up an estimated 4 per cent of Border Patrol encounters.
Steven Cesar, 29, was hoping to join cousins in Miami and Orlando and find work to support his 8 year-old daughter back in Haiti when he arrived at the US-Mexico border alone.
Cesar said he couldn’t understand why the US accepted refugees from other countries in crisis even as they deported Haitians.
“They received ... people from Afghanistan,” he said. “They know all the problems we have in Haiti - the earthquakes, political problems.
Why don’t they want us?” Many of the Haitians at the southern US border are among the 250,000 who left their homeland after the devastating 2010 earthquake there and settled in Chile or Brazil. Both countries have suffered steep economic declines during the pandemic, sparking the current migration north. Human smugglers seized on the opportunity, Accilien said.
“All these governments just turn a blind eye,” she said. “But people are making money off these Haitian immigrants.” The US State Department is requesting that Chile, Brazil and other nations accept Haitian migrants who lived in those countries before journeying to the US border.
copy short url   Copy
26/09/2021
10