Migration crisis in the United States: departure of Haitian migrants from the Mexican-American border

Almost all of the mostly Haitian migrants who had gathered on both sides of the US-Mexico border left their makeshift camps, ending a standoff that had sparked a major border crisis for the Biden administration.

After failing to return to the United States, all the migrants, including many Haitians, who gathered on both sides of the US-Mexico border left their makeshift camps, according to the US government, which specifies that it There are “no more migrants in the encampment under the bridge” in the town of Del Rio, Texas, which numbered up to 15,000 people last weekend.

The last migrants who had been camping for a week in Ciudad Acuña, on the northern border of Mexico, have been relocated to accommodation centers in the capital Mexico City.

“Here, we really feel at home because the people support us”, explains Wenchen Elius, a construction worker in exile who arrived in a shelter. “The people here make us feel that we are really important in Mexico. This is the most important and what we want to feel. This is why my family and I have chosen to stay here in Mexico.”

8,000 voluntary returns to Mexico

On the American side, around 2,000 people were deported by plane to Haiti, and 12,400 were able to leave the site and will have to appear before an immigration judge to defend their asylum claim, said the US Minister of Security. interior Alejandro Mayork. “Many will be sent back to Haiti,” he added.

8,000 of them returned voluntarily to Mexico, where around 5,000 people were transferred to shelters. A few hours earlier, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had declared that he did not want his country to become “a migrant camp”. “We want the problems to be dealt with at the source,” he added, calling on the United States to invest in the economic development of Central American countries so that their inhabitants are no longer forced to flee poverty.

In Ciudad Acuña, on the other hand, the secretary of the municipal council Felipe Basulto assured that migrants in accommodation centers in the city would not be arrested or deported, and that they could move around the city “with confidence” while waiting. that their status be fixed.