President Joe Biden is facing renewed political pressure over arrivals at the southern U.S. border, as roughly 12,000 Haitians await processing in an encampment under a Del Rio bridge.
Democratic lawmakers have urged the president to halt deportations, even as officials voice concerns about the swelling numbers. But the Department of Homeland Security announced on Saturday it would begin to expel some of the Haitian migrants as part of a “comprehensive strategy” for dealing with the crisis.
“The Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey. Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” DHS said in its Saturday announcement. “Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”
ABBOTT SAYS BIDEN REVERSED COURSE AND REFUSED TO ALLOW CLOSURE OF TEXAS BORDER CROSSINGS
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade took the unusual step Friday evening of shutting down the Del Rio Port of Entry, not allowing traffic north into the United States or south into Mexico, to stem the tide.
“President Biden, for reference, 10,503 people is inching close to 1/3 of the population of Del Rio, Texas,” Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano, a Democrat, tweeted last week. By Friday, the total grew by several thousand more.
Lozano had urged the White House to step in.
In a tweet directed at Biden on Friday, the mayor asked, “Have you been briefed on the ongoing crisis yet?”
Deportation flights are set to increase, according to internal documents reviewed by NBC News.
Asked about this, a White House official told the Washington Examiner the DHS statement was forthcoming. The official declined to say whether Biden had been briefed on the crisis.
The response from Democrats is likely to pose a challenge as the president wrestles with the scale of the crisis.
Led by Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Nydia Velázquez of California, more than 50 Democratic lawmakers called for “indefinitely halting” deportations to Haiti in a letter addressed to the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
“The Haitian government’s ability to safely receive its citizens will take months, if not years, to secure,” the letter said.
Haiti is still reeling from an earthquake that resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and thousands of more injuries, as well as the assassination of its late President Jovenel Moise in July.
Authorities say most Haitians in Del Rio are not recent arrivals but have migrated from Central and South America, where they have spent several years. More than 29,000 Haitians have arrived over the last 11 months, according to data from Customs and Border Protection.
Migrant arrests at the southern border have risen sharply since Biden took office in January, with thousands arriving each month from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. More than 208,887 people were apprehended in August, according to CBP data.
The administration has vowed to tackle the numbers by speeding up processing, advancing court hearings, and targeting the reasons officials say are responsible for people leaving their home countries.
Last month, the White House shared a five-pillar blueprint to address migration “root causes,” and Biden earlier tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with handling the diplomacy guiding the effort.
But experts at the time said it would do little to stem the immediate surge. It also fails to target migration from countries further afield. That number, too, has grown. In August, about 3 in 10 arrested at the southern border made their way from countries outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle.
Recent polls show voters are concerned with Biden’s handling of immigration. In a survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies this month, this was especially acute among voters 65 and over. Asked to pick their foremost concern from a basket that included sweeping federal spending, the Afghanistan withdrawal, COVID-19, the border with Mexico, or none of the above, most chose the border at 40%.
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Congressional Democrats, with Biden’s support, plan to include provisions offering legal status to most undocumented immigrants already in the country — including a pathway to citizenship — in their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Some Republicans contend such immigration policies encourage the migrant surge.
The Biden administration is also expecting to resettle about 95,000 Afghan refugees in the country by the end of the month, another hurdle the administration has wrestled within recent weeks.
