The Dallas Morning News on Biden's response to Haitian border surge
The following editorial published on Sept. 22 in the Dallas Morning News:
The scenes from the border are dire and heart-rending. More than 14,000 migrants, most of them Haitians, crowded under and near a bridge in a makeshift camp. Women gave birth among the squalor. Men and children waded through the Rio Grande to Mexico for food, clean water and diapers.
The wave of migrants, many fleeing poverty and political instability, overwhelmed authorities in the small community of Del Rio. Given the untenable situation and the realities of the pandemic, the Biden administration is right to use its authority to return migrants on charter flights.
The Department of Homeland Security said this weekend that it is working with “source and transit countries” to accept people who previously lived in those countries. It appears that many of the migrants who arrived in Del Rio had left homes in Brazil and Chile, where tens of thousands of Haitians resettled after a catastrophic earthquake in 2010.
It’s unclear how many Haitians at the U.S. border came from South America, but analysts tracking migration patterns point to data from the Panamanian government, which reported that more than 20,000 Haitians crossed its southern border this year, along with 4,365 Chilean and Brazilian children born to Haitian parents. Records show those numbers jumped dramatically in June and July. Misinformation and economic insecurity seem to be driving the surge.
Read more: https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/the-dallas-morning-news-on-bidens-response-to-haitian-border-surge/article_0e5b31f2-1d3f-11ec-8eef-57f4aff790ff.html