Before 15,000 Haitian migrants made Springfield, Ohio, the center of the 2024 presidential race, a similar number of Haitian migrants put Del Rio, Texas, in the national spotlight in 2021.

“Although I foreshadowed a worst-case scenario,” Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano, a Democrat, told reporters, “this is probably a worse case of worst-case scenarios. I need the administration to recognize that there is a border crisis happening in real time right now, and it has dire consequences on security, health, and safety.”