White House criticizes border agents who rounded
up migrants on horseback
Press secretary voices concern over widely shared
images as more than 6,000 migrants removed from Texas encampment
Guardian
staff and agencies
Mon 20 Sep
2021 21.45 BST
The White
House on Monday responded critically to widely shared images of US border
patrol agents in Texas rounding up Haitian migrants on horseback.
The White
House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked if the use of horses and possibly
whips, potent imagery in a country founded on slavery, represented an
“appropriate tactic”.
She said:
“I have seen some of the footage. I don’t have the full context. I can’t
imagine what context would make that appropriate.”
She added:
“I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or
appropriate.”
More than
6,000 Haitians and other migrants have been removed from the encampment at the
Texas border town of Del Rio, other US officials said Monday as they defended
their strong response.
Calling it
a “challenging and heartbreaking situation”, the homeland security secretary,
Alejandro Mayorkas, issued a stark warning: “If you come to the United States
illegally, you will be returned. Your journey will not succeed, and you will be
endangering your life and your family’s life.”
Mayorkas
and the border patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, said they would look into the actions of
the agents on horseback to push back migrants and refugees at the river between
Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, and Del Rio, but both officials said they saw nothing
apparently wrong based on the photos and video.
In the past
few weeks more than 12,000 Haitians have arrived in Del Rio, gathering in a
huge makeshift camp under and near a bridge. Many have moved between the two
cities, seeking food and supplies in Mexico while family members wait in the
US. Haitians have migrated to the US via South America for several years, many
through the Darien Gap, a jungle in Panama.
Some recent
arrivals have said the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti and the
assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, made them afraid to return.
Nonetheless,
the US has begun an operation to fly thousands back to their homeland and stop
others from crossing from Mexico, beginning what could be one of America’s
swiftest, large-scale expulsions in decades.
The only
obvious parallel for such a mass expulsion without opportunity to seek asylum
was in 1992, when the US coast guard intercepted Haitian refugees at sea, Yael
Schacher, senior US advocate at Refugees International, told the Associated
Press.
When the
border at Del Rio was closed on Sunday, migrants and refugees moved further
east to cross the Rio Grande River, which separates the US and Mexico. They
were stopped by border patrol agents on horseback and law enforcement
officials.
Paul Ratje,
a photographer who took a widely circulated image of an agent on horseback
grabbing a migrant carrying food, told the Washington Post: “I get to the scene
and everybody is crossing there … all of a sudden some police showed up and
they started trying to get people to leave. Then the border patrol agents on
horseback arrived and they started trying to get people to leave.”
Mexican
authorities in an airboat told others to go back into Mexico. According to
reporters at the scene, US agents yelled at migrants to get out of the
waist-deep river. Several hundred who had crossed were ordered to the Del Rio
camp.
“Go now,”
agents yelled. According to a reporter for the El Paso Times, one agent “swung
his whip menacingly, charging his horse toward the men in the river”.
Border
patrol agents in the remote area of Texas often use horses, given the difficult
terrain. It was not clear if whips were used on Sunday.
On Monday,
Mayorkas told reporters he had been told “that to ensure control of the horse,
long reins are used, but we are going to investigate the facts to ensure that
the situation is as we understand it to be, and if it’s anything different, we
will respond accordingly.”
Vice News
reported that agents sometimes used long reins to “deter people from getting
too close to the horse”.
Ratje said
migrants had tried to run past agents on horseback. “That’s when one of the
agents grabbed a guy and kind of swung him around,” he said, of the picture he
took.
In Haiti,
more than 320 migrants arrived in Port-au-Prince on three flights on Sunday and
six flights were expected on Tuesday. The US planned to begin seven expulsion
flights daily on Wednesday, four to Port-au-Prince and three to Cap-Haïtien, an
official told the AP.
The
expulsions were made possible by a pandemic-related authority adopted by Donald
Trump that allows for migrants to be immediately removed. The Biden
administration exempted unaccompanied children but let the order stand.
Republicans in Washington have sought to use events in Del Rio to portray a
southern border spun out of control.
Mexico has
said it will also deport Haitians. In Port-au-Prince on Sunday, dozens of
returning migrants lined up to receive plates of rice, beans, chicken and
plantains. All were given $100 and tested for Covid-19, though authorities were
not planning to put them into quarantine.
Gary
Monplaisir, 26, said his parents and sister lived in Port-au-Prince but to
reach their house he, his wife and their five-year-old daughter would have to
cross a gang-controlled area where killings are routine.
“I’m
scared,” he said. “I don’t have a plan.”
He said he
moved to Chile in 2017, as he was about to earn an accounting degree, to work
as a tow truck driver. He paid for his wife and daughter to join him. They
tried to reach the US because he thought he could get a better job and help his
family in Haiti.
“We’re
always looking for better opportunities,” he said.
Some said
they were planning to leave Haiti again. Valeria Ternission, 29, said she and
her husband wanted to travel with their four-year-old son back to Chile, where
she worked as a bakery cashier.
“I am truly
worried, especially for the child,” she said. “I can’t do anything here.”
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