The White House is tracking nearly 20,000 Haitian nationals in Necocli, Colombia, while urging stepped-up efforts in the region to control the flow of migrants heading toward the United States.
The group “is forming a human bottleneck … even bigger than some of the recent migrant logjams on the U.S.-Mexico border,” a senior administration official said Thursday. Necocli, a small town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, is a key transit point for migrants preparing to head north through Panama’s Darien Gap on their way to the U.S.
TEXAS BRACES FOR SURGE OF 60,000 HAITIAN MIGRANTS
While the Biden administration has said migrants should not come to the U.S., the number of people attempting to cross the southern border illegally has risen sharply over the past eight months. Some 30,000 Haitian migrants streamed into Del Rio, Texas, with a further 60,000 expected to arrive in Texas in the coming weeks.
The administration has faced criticism for its handling of the border crisis, and for deporting people to a country still reeling from the assassination of its late president and an earthquake that killed 2,000 people. Last month, Biden’s point person on Haiti, former Special Envoy Daniel Foote, resigned.
Still, migration protocols in the region have abetted the flow towards the U.S. for years.
Migrants crossing the Panamanian border with Colombia typically spend a few weeks in Panama before traveling north to Costa Rica, their path eased, in part, due to an agreement between the two countries to manage the flow. Migration authorities in Panama facilitate the transport of northbound migrants so long as they have a valid passport. Most of the migrants are Cuban or Haitian. The U.S. has long viewed the process as an early warning system.
The senior official said Washington remains in “very close communication” with Colombia and Panama but suggested it is looking to broaden accountability among Central American countries.
“We’re shifting to having a regional conversation,” he said, describing a “collaborative approach.”
He added: “You want a functioning border, but you also want to create alternatives to individuals that are taking that dangerous journey.”
One example may include extending in-country processing for people seeking U.S. asylum.
“We’re not just making sure that governments have secured their borders but are also upholding their own asylum and refugee obligations,” the official said.
Some said the Biden administration has done too little, too late.
Brandon Judd, the president of the Border Patrol union, told the Washington Examiner last month that the government had all the warning signs in place to know an unprecedentedly large group was headed to the border but did not act.
The National Border Patrol Council’s Del Rio, Texas, chapter asked the government in June to plan how it would process the tens of thousands of Haitians expected to cross the border in coming months.
“Not only did they ignore [our] suggestion, they gave [us] an excuse that they have more efficient processes. But they didn’t implement any efficient process,” he said.
The White House said it is continuing to use the Title 42 public health rule to deport Haitian migrants and plans to do so as new groups arrive.
“We do have a system in place that we’re going to continue to follow,” White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the Washington Examiner this week. “We continue to have the push factors and telling folks, ‘This is not the time to come,’ and we’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing in the past.”
On Thursday, the senior official said the administration is repatriating Haitians to third countries as well. But thousands more Haitian nationals have been released into the interior of the country while awaiting further processing.
The Texas Department of Public Safety’s regional director, Victor Escalon, said the DHS had planned to “fly them over back to Haiti,” but the flights were canceled, forcing the Border Patrol to take into custody up to 900 people on Sept. 12, before the tens of thousands of Haitians crossed a week later.
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“Those were released within two days,” Escalon said during a press conference on Sept. 30. “And guess what? They’re on social media. … And they’re pushing out to the rest of South America, Central America, Haiti, ‘Hey, we’re getting cut loose.’ So as a result, after the 10th, you see the numbers increasing.”
