In what is being described as “an unprecedented” humanitarian event, thousands of migrants have converged under the bridge that connects Del Rio in Texas and Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña, creating a makeshift camp with few basic services in intense heat in the latest border emergency facing Joe Biden.
According to Reuters, Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano said that as of early Thursday evening 10,503 migrants were under the Del Rio International Bridge, up from 8,200 in the morning. That number may have increased overnight.
The migrants are mostly Haitians, with Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans also present. “The border patrol right now is so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants in the Del Rio sector,” Lozano said.
Many of the Haitian migrants have not come directly from the island nation, but were living in South America and have been brought to Del Rio along a common smuggling route used by a Mexican cartel, the DHS said.
“We have around 2,000 to 3,000 at any given moment in detention,” Lozano added, explaining that many under the bridge “are not in detention, they’re just waiting to get detained to continue their process into the border patrol custody.”
“Border patrol is overwhelmed,” the Val Verde county sheriff, Joe Frank Martinez, told the Texas Tribune. “They just can’t process them fast enough, so there’s a backlog of these individuals underneath the bridge. They’re not detained, they’re just gathered there waiting their turn to get processed.”
Humanitarian challenge for the Biden administration
Migrants arriving at the makeshift processing center under the bridge are given emergency supplies like water and infant formula and are processed before being taken to a Border Patrol station or Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
This procedure still takes a long time. Migrants showed Reuters tickets with numbers they had received from U.S. Border Patrol. Some people have been waiting to be processed for up to five days. And, in order to feed their families, migrants recross the Rio Grande back into Mexico to buy food.
Ernesto, a 31-year-old Haitian migrant, slipped back into Mexico on Thursday to buy water and food – for the fourth time, he said, since arriving in the United States on Monday morning. Ernesto, who declined to give his surname to protect his identity, said he and his 3-year-old daughter had not been fed at the camp, where migrants are jostling for shade.
In a statement, the Border Patrol said it is increasing staffing in Del Rio to facilitate a “safe, humane and orderly process.” Drinking water, towels, and portable toilets have been provided, the statement added, while migrants wait to be transported to facilities.
With the recent earthquake in Haiti, and the political unrest in the country, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians already living in the U.S. in May – but this does not apply to those migrants crossing the southern border.
In fact, ICE has begun deporting Haitians back to their country, angering advocates who say more should be given a chance at asylum in the United States due to the country’s upheaval, according to NBC News.
