THE Southern border is swelling with a dramatic surge in illegal crossings not seen in decades. Last month, more than 200,000 people crossed the border. This brings the total for this fiscal year to 1.5 million.
“There are 9,000 people really anxious and stressed,” Bruno Lozano from Del Rio, the mayor of the town, has reached out to federal officials at Homeland Security to help his 35,000-strong community.
HAITIANS IN MEXICO
In recent days, throngs of crowds – many of them Haitian migrants – have been amassing in the rural town of Del Rio and created a new front to the humanitarian crisis dogging the US.
Lozano described the conditions of the hoards of migrants camping out under The International Bridge as squalid and starting to take on the character of a shantytown, with scant access to clean water and food and only a few portable toilets, according to the New York Times.
It is rapidly changing with unsanitary accommodation and a growing population.
GOV. ABBOTT BLAMES BIDEN
The dire situation drew Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state police to assist border agents in Del Rio and the National Guard, accusing the federal government of failing to reduce the number of crossings.
“The Biden administration is in complete disarray and is handling the border crisis as badly as the evacuation from Afghanistan,” Abbott said, knocking President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan
Days before the Aug. 31 deadline to end America’s longest war, a suicidal bombing detonated killing 13 US service members.
DEL RIO SURGE
The majority of those trying to enter the US through the bleak 245-mile stretch of the United States border with Mexico are people fleeing Haiti, the Caribbean island that had been pelted with hurricanes and in July lost its president Jovenel Moïse to an assassination.
Many of these migrants are from Haiti and have been crossing the border to Del Rio to seek asylum in the US.
According to border statistics, the staggering number of migrants increased in July and August.
The Times reports that border agents had taken multiple Hatiains trying to cross into the Del Rio area earlier in the week.
MORE AGENTS, FLIGHTS TO HAITI
The Department of Homeland Security has already ramped up with additional officers to the region as of Thursday to help relieve and provide reinforcements.
Federal officials could also fly some migrants to areas closer to the border that are less crowded to reduce the number of migrants.
According to the Times, the Biden administration said that return flights to Haiti will take off Monday in an effort to discourage Haitians from trying again.
UNACCOMPANIED MINORS
Many of the migrants are children, or officially called unaccompanied minors.
Border patrol agents discovered two abandoned children along the Rio Grande on Sept. 14, in Eagle Pass, Texas.
CBP had more than 2,200 unaccompanied migrants children under its custody as of August 1.
Encounters of unaccompanied children increased 24 percent, with 18,962 encounters in July compared with 15,234 in June, according to the CBP.
And from October 2020 to August 2021, border patrol agents have encountered over 132,622 unaccompanied migrant children along the Southwest borders.
BIDEN’S ‘CRISIS’
President Joe Biden has been accused by Republicans for mishandling or even ignoring the crisis at the southern border.
Back in March, Kevin McCarthy, the House of Representatives minority leader, paid a visit to border facilities in El Paso, Texas,
“It’s more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak,” McCarthy said at the time.
“It didn’t have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration.”
Last month, McCarthy tweeted: “More than 1,000,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the border on Biden’s watch – in less than 7 months.
This is a CRISIS.
“The longer he and Democrats ignore it, the worse it gets.”
House and Senate Republicans accuse Biden of promising to end Trump’s border policies.
Many also criticized Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief measure which passed through Congress without any Republican support, granting stimulus payments to the one million citizen spouses of undocumented immigrants.
‘REMAIN IN MEXICO LITE’
And Biden attempted to scrap Trump’s “Remain In Mexico” policy.
This policy forced thousands of asylum seekers to stay in Mexico to await a US hearing. Instead of crossing into the US to be heard, they were forced to wait years for their legal cases to be resolved.
This week, Biden has signaled he would favor a “Remain in Mexico lite.”
It would keep the number of asylum seekers awaiting their go-ahead to come to the US stay in Mexico for processing but give them more suitable living conditions and help them be represented by attorneys, multiple sources told Politico.
According to the Times, Thursday’s order by a Texas judge that the Biden administration stop turning away migrants under the public-health rule was a further complication to the crisis.
Few were turned away from this rule, however, because of humanitarian exemptions among other factors.