increasingly politicized humanitarian situation<\/a> that prompted the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti and widespread outrage after images emerged of border agents maneuvering their horses to forcibly block and move migrants.<\/p>\nOn Friday, President Joe Biden said the way the agents used their horses was \u201chorrible\u201d and that \u201cpeople will pay\u201d as a result. The agents have been assigned to administrative duties while the administration investigates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be consequences,\u201d Biden told reporters. \u201cIt\u2019s an embarrassment, but it\u2019s beyond an embarrassment \u2014 it\u2019s dangerous, it\u2019s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world and sends the wrong message at home. It\u2019s simply not who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has said that nearly 2,000 Haitians have been rapidly expelled on flights since Sunday under pandemic powers that deny people the chance to seek asylum. About 3,900 were being processed for a possible return to Haiti or placement in U.S. immigration court proceedings. Others have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court or to report to immigration authorities, and some returned to Mexico..<\/p>\n
A U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation said seven flights were scheduled to Haiti on Friday, six on Saturday and seven on Sunday. The official was not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n
And in Mexico, just over 100 migrants, most of them single men, remained Friday morning in the riverside camp in Ciudad Acu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n
Dozens of families who had been there crossed back to Del Rio overnight after Mexican authorities left the area. With the river running higher, some Border Patrol agents helped families who were struggling to cross with children.<\/p>\n
Some migrants also moved to small hotels or private homes in Ciudad Acu\u00f1a. Authorities detained six migrants at one on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe option was to go to a place where there aren\u2019t a lot of people and there request documents to be legal in Mexico,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about the situation in Ciudad Acu\u00f1a on Friday, Mexico President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador said, \u201cwe don\u2019t want Mexico to be a migrant camp, we want the problem to be addressed fully.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition in Del Rio, migrants stepped off a white Border Patrol van on Friday, many smiling and looking relieved to have been released into the U.S. Some carried sleeping babies. A toddler walked behind her mother wrapped in a silver heat blanket.<\/p>\n
A man who\u2019d driven 200 miles from 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\u2019t want to share his last name, didn\u2019t see them in this group.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like my friend is worth my time to come down and help,\u201d he said, explaining that he wore the vest so his friend \u2014 a nurse whom he\u2019d met on a humanitarian trip to Haiti over a decade ago \u2014 would be able to spot him in the crowd when she arrived with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just see it as an opportunity to serve somebody,\u201d said Dave, who considers himself a Trump supporter but hates how politicized the immigration issue has become. \u201cWe have so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Haitians are being allowed to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily to seek asylum or to stay under some other claim to residency, with notices to appear later before immigration authorities. DHS officials declined to specify the number but said they are people with particular \u201cvulnerabilities,\u201d meaning they are pregnant, have young children or the U.S. doesn\u2019t have the capacity to hold them in detention, especially during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The government has no plans to stop expelling others on public health grounds despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration enacted the policy in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Biden administration has used it to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants.<\/p>\n
A federal judge late last week ruled that the rule was improper and gave the government two weeks to halt it, but the Biden administration appealed.<\/p>\n
Officials said the U.S. State Department is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided there to return, but it\u2019s complicated because some of them no longer have legal status there.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation on Thursday protesting the \u201cinhumane\u201d large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants.<\/p>\n
Foote, who was appointed in July, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying he was stepping down immediately \u201cwith deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
The career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti.<\/p>\n
State Department spokesman Ned Price disputed Foote\u2019s assertions, saying his proposals had been \u201cfully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false,\u201d Price said.<\/p>\n
The humanitarian group UNICEF also condemned the expulsions, saying Thursday that initial estimates show more than two out of three migrants expelled to Haiti are women and children, including newborns.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaiti is reeling from the triple tragedy of natural disasters, gang violence and the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF\u2019s executive director, who said those sent back without adequate protection \u201cfind themselves even more vulnerable to violence, poverty and displacement \u2014 factors that drove them to migrate in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Civil Rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who toured the camp on Thursday, said he’d witnessed \u201ca real catastrophic and human disgrace\u201d and vowed to \u201cstand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: Politics DEL RIO, Texas \u2014 No migrants remained Friday at the Texas border encampment where almost 15,000 people \u2014 most of them Haitians \u2014 had converged just days earlier… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":21885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21884"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}