Consider This from NPR - Border Crisis: Thousands Of Haitians Flown to Haiti Against Their Will

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Thousands of Haitan migrants who were camping out under a bridge in a Texas border town seeking to cross the Rio Grande and find refuge in the US are now being forced back to their home country.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Haitians who've been camped out at the southern U.S. border are being flown to their home country by the thousands. A lot of people are telling us how they were mistreated, how they felt like they were deceived by, you know, the U.S. authorities. Widlor Marancourt is a journalist based in Port-au-Prince who has been interviewing migrants as they arrive in the capital city. They did not know and nobody told them they were being flown back to Haiti. Videos from Tuesday show some deported Haitians attempting to rush back onto a plane that had just dropped them off. U.S. officials began these forced removals as an encampment under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, grew to more than 14,000 people.

Most of the Haitians there had been living in other countries across Central and South America. A lot of these people left Haiti years ago. Some of them left after the 2010 earthquake. And some of them do not have relatives near the city, near Port-au-Prince, where the U.S. authorities bring them. It's still not clear why thousands of Haitians chose to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border now. But Mérincourt says this is a particularly dangerous time to return to Haiti. The president was recently assassinated, gangs dominate the capital, and the country is still recovering from last month's devastating earthquake.

And these people do not have the means and the capacity to take care of themselves. He says once they arrive, they're given a little money. Most said they got 25 U.S. dollars. Merinkor says that's not even enough for a hotel room. I talked to the head of the Haitian National Migration. And what he told me was Haiti doesn't have the means and the capacity to help these people. And he said to me, it's one crisis too many. Consider this.

Migrants from Haiti are being forced back to a struggling and dangerous country. And those still at the border seeking asylum in the U.S. are facing harassment and confusion. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Thursday, September 23rd. nationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR.

The U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, resigned from his position on Thursday. In a letter, he said he will not, quote, be associated with the United States' inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees. A fleet of state vehicles being used to try to stop those migrants from crossing into Texas. In Texas, state troopers have formed a miles-long steel wall of patrol cars along the border to discourage people from crossing. Right now, a lot of manpower is here to try to get control of this border. And earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had this to say to the Haitian migrants. If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned.

Mayorkas spoke in the afternoon sun just outside the border in Del Rio. Your journey will not succeed and you will be endangering your life and your family's lives. These policies were already facing pushback and then shocking images from the border started to spread on social media. Images of Border Patrol on horseback are causing controversy. Video shows border agents using a whipping motion to push back migrants at the river. What we actually saw was them using long reins on their horses and flicking them towards people. John Holman is a reporter with Al Jazeera who is based in Mexico, and he witnessed the scene firsthand.

So it's really tense scenes there on the river. That was when the men were trying to get back across with food and water for their families. They had crossed back over to Mexico in search of groceries and were confronted on their way back to the U.S. side. The Department of Homeland Security has said it will investigate the situation. After that happened, that sort of flashpoint, that tension, then the Border Patrol agents,

there were a lot of photographers and a lot of cameras there, and they may have suddenly become aware of that, let people pass through. And we haven't seen any flashpoints of that nature at that point since then. Holman spoke with NPR's Audie Cornish this week, along with Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, who has also been on the ground in Del Rio.

Jacqueline, what do we know about how so many Haitians ended up arriving at the border so quickly? I mean, did they essentially get through Mexico somehow undetected? Honestly, I don't think that it was quickly. First of all, we have to remember that a lot of these, if not the majority of these people, are individuals who were in other countries in Latin America. They were living in Chile. They were living in Brazil, where the situation turned.

They were having a hard time making a living. And what they have told me when I spoke to them is a lot of them came to Mexico with the hope of being able to live in Mexico. But they've had a very difficult time getting work permits, finding jobs, even finding a place to live. And so this is a community that, you know, operates through word of mouth. So people started saying, hey, Suidala Cunha is open. This port is open. John, it's been reported that Mexican authorities are busing people away from the border. So what does that mean for the community of people that have gathered here?

Yeah, what's official is the governor of Coahuila has said that a flight's actually left with people back to Tapachula. That's in deep South Mexico, right on the border with Guatemala. And he's basically saying, if you want to be in our country, you've got to process your papers there. And he's also said that he's in talks with US authorities. So there's obviously coordination going on here between Mexico and the US. And that's something that's been happening for some time. Mexico has been stopping in Tapachula on that southern border, people getting out and getting through. My colleague was actually there just last week, and he said there's a lot, thousands of people, a lot of them from Haiti also, that are in Tapachula at the moment. And Mexican authorities have sort of got that city circled off in the south to try and prevent them getting further up.

Can I just say that Tapachula was brought up, everyone I spoke to, every migrant, they raised the issue of Tapachula and that the difficulties that they face in Tapachula, which led them to Ciudad Acuna. That is how all of these Haitians have ended up there because of what's been happening in Tapachula on top of the difficulties of being able to get legal documents in Mexico. So Jacqueline, when it comes to the Biden administration's response here, trying to send some sort of message not to cross the border, what is getting through? Right now, it's not necessarily getting through. People are still treating it as rumors that they hear that the U.S. is supporting people. I think as the days go on, this message will start to really trickle down. What I found in Mexico was that people

heard it, and so they were contemplating whether or not to take the risk. But as videos are starting to circulate out of Haiti and people are starting to hear interviews with returning migrants, it is starting to maybe get to Mexico. but we know that there are still people, migrants, who are trying to make it across. Of the Haitians who have been flown home, are they returning with the message? What has that return been like? Because I don't know how a country like Haiti that is going through the political turmoil, the natural disaster, the aftermath of that can absorb people being returned? The returnees are angry. On the one hand, they're insisting that the border was open. They don't understand why they were detained. They're complaining about the conditions in

detention. They are blaming the Haitian government for, quote unquote, signing deportation papers. To me, there's a lack of understanding that they crossed illegally, irregularly into the United States. They really are under the impression that what they did was sanctioned. So right there, you see the shortcoming in terms of what the Biden administration is trying to do. At the same time, we do see what Secretary Mayorkas is saying in terms of what the Biden administration is trying to do. At the same time, we do see what Secretary Mayorkas is saying in terms of the misinformation. A number of people have said that they ended up there because people said, hey, if I had a child in Chile, I can get TPS in the United States. Or somebody says Blinken said to come.

Where people are getting this information, it's unclear, but they were guided by this idea that they would be welcomed into the United States. Jacqueline Charles with the Miami Herald and Al Jazeera's John Holman. NPR correspondent Carrie Khan has been following this from both sides of the border, in Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, where she spoke with my colleague Leila Fadal. So Carrie, there are migrants gathered on the Mexican side of the border too, right? What's the scene there? What are you seeing? Right. They're camping out. They're in provisional tents. They're under tarps. They're in shady areas in this park that butts up against

the southern side of the Rio Grande. It's hard to say how many are there because they're all spread out wherever you can find shade. It's very hot here, but easily there are dozens of people at this park. There's also a heavy presence of Mexican state and federal police. You mentioned that there is a line of state troopers on the Texas side. A similar line is on the Mexican side. Police are dressed in army fatigues there and pickup trucks lined right at the riverbank. It's really an impressive show of force, but clearly it's not any sort of enforcement or sealing of the border on this side. Several migration officials and international groups have arrived to the park,

and they are trying to urge the Haitians to return to southern Mexico. They want them to stay there, especially if they plan to ask to remain in Mexico. Now, you've been speaking with people there, some who are from Haiti who went to the U.S. and then were turned back. What are they saying? Right. We spoke quite a long time in the shade of a large tree in this really dusty park with 24-year-old Anderson Cherry. And he arrived here in the border town last weekend and he forged the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas. And like the thousands there, he was hoping, waiting for a chance to get into the U.S. Here's what he had to say. He says he spent four days under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas,

that we've all seen those pictures. But when he heard the U.S. was deporting people back to Haiti, he just booked it back to the Mexican side to this park. He went back across the river and he's been here since. He said there is nothing for him in Haiti. One Haitian that we spoke to made an interesting comment. He said, how can the U.S. send us all back to our country? He said the government can't even keep the president safe. He's referring to the recent assassination of the Haitian president. He said, how can we be safe there?

Yeah, I mean, it's worth pointing out that there's been this recent instability and turmoil, but many came come from Haiti. They've been in other countries for a couple months for years. Tell us about some of the journeys they've made as you've heard them talking in the last couple days. Most people I've spoken with have been living in South America for years. They left Haiti for different reasons, mostly economic insecurity. Many had been living in Chile and Brazil and months ago decided to leave there and take that treacherous journey north through all those countries. The 24-year-old Anderson Cherry that we were talking with, he said he had been able to eke out a living in Brazil since 2019. He was even able to send $20 a month back to his mother and father in Haiti.

But the pandemic just crippled the economy, and he was getting desperate and headed to Mexico. And he actually arrived in the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula about two months ago. He was detained for 16 days, and once out, he had no work, and the Mexicans were not giving him the paperwork he needed to be able to move out of the border city. And that's a complaint we've heard a lot from many Haitians. They just felt trapped down there in southern Mexico. So if people were suffering really for months and years trying to eke out a living, why now? Why is this huge gathering happening now? Do authorities in the U.S. or Mexico know that? Well, I can tell you what we've heard is that over Mexico's independence holiday, which was the 15th and 16th of September, migrants in Tapachula, there were thousands already there,

they were given the green light to board buses and head north. Who exactly gave that? Okay, we don't know. But it's clear that hundreds traveled on buses for the 1,500-mile trip north to here, impeded throughout Mexico, and they did it very quickly. And I asked a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official today to comment about the large-scale smuggling operation in Mexico that could have brought so many Haitians to the border here so quickly. The official said the U.S. is investigating, but officials couldn't comment any further. Are the people that you've spoken to in the park on the Mexican side planning to watch what happens with those who cross to the U.S. and then decide what they'll do themselves? I don't it's it's unclear they don't have a lot of options they feel like they can't go across back to the U.S. they can't stay in this park

for long you know there were these officials and government and organizations trying to convince them to go back to southern Mexico. I spoke with a Mexican immigration official who was not authorized to speak publicly, but did say the Haitians have to return to southern Mexico if they want to stay in the country and receive any sort of permission to be in Mexico legally. NPR international correspondentent Carrie Kahn. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability,

upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kaufman.org.