Texas governor closes border crossings to Mexico, citing caravans 'overrunning' state

Texas governor closes border crossings to Mexico, citing caravans 'overrunning' state
Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner
Thu, September 16, 2021, 12:25 PM·2 min read

AUSTIN, Texas — The governor of Texas made the unprecedented move of shutting down six ports of entry with Mexico following a surge of migrants crossing illegally into the United States.

“The sheer negligence of the Biden Administration to do their job and secure the border is appalling. I have directed the Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to surge personnel and vehicles to shut down six points of entry along the southern border to stop these caravans from overrunning our state," Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner Thursday afternoon.

Abbott's office did not specify which six ports of entry will be shuttered or how long the closure will last. However, Abbott said the federal agency, Customs and Border Protection, asked the state to step in and assist.

"The border crisis is so dire that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting our help as their agents are overwhelmed by the chaos," Abbott said. "Unlike President Biden, the State of Texas remains committed to securing our border and protecting Americans.”

Images that show thousands of people who illegally crossed the border and are in Border Patrol custody under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, were published this week on Twitter by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin.

Border Patrol does not have facility space to detain and process the thousands being encountered, and an unknown number of people are evading detection when crossing and getting away.

CBP, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

I don't know what Biden can do to stop those criminal immigrants..
He could order the army to open fire on them. Tanks or airstrikes.
Perhaps some hand grenades or flame throwers would fix the problem.
The Texans could hang em all..
Just some suggestions..
Everybody wants to come to America to get food stamps..

Abbott says Biden reversed course and refused to allow closure of Texas border crossings
Anna Giaritelli
Thu, September 16, 2021, 12:25 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made the unprecedented move of shutting down six ports of entry with Mexico on Thursday following a surge of migrants crossing illegally into the United States. However, he reversed course an hour later, saying the Biden administration changed course and refused to shut the crossings.

Earlier in the day, the Republican governor said he directed the Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to shut down six points of entry on the southern border to "stop these caravans from overrunning our state."

“The sheer negligence of the Biden Administration to do their job and secure the border is appalling," he had said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner Thursday afternoon. Abbott's office did not specify which six ports of entry would be shuttered or how long the closure would last. However, Abbott said the federal agency, Customs and Border Protection, asked the state to step in and assist.

But shortly after announcing the closure, which only the federal government has the ability to do because ports are federally operated, Abbott reversed course, saying ports would be open.

"Six hours after the U.S. Customs and Border Protection requested help from Texas to close ports of entry and secure the border, the Biden Administration has now flip-flopped to a different strategy that abandons border security and instead makes it easier for people to cross illegally and for cartels to exploit the border," Abbott wrote in a statement.

"The Biden Administration is in complete disarray and is handling the border crisis as badly as the evacuations from Afghanistan," Abbott said.

Instead, Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety officers will be present in the area to "deter crossings." However, military and police cannot arrest migrants on immigration crimes, as it is a federal crime and only federal law enforcement can make an arrest.

Images that show thousands of people who illegally crossed the border and are in Border Patrol custody under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, were published this week on Twitter by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin.

Border Patrol does not have facility space to detain and process the thousands being encountered, and an unknown number of people are evading detection when crossing and getting away.

CBP, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

9-18-2021

US authorities accelerate removal of Haitians at U.S.-Mexico border.

CIUDAD ACUÑA, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. authorities moved some 2,000 people to other immigration processing stations on Friday from a Texas border town that has seen an influx of Haitian and other migrants, the Department of Homeland Security
said on Saturday.

Such transfers will continue "in order to ensure
that irregular migrants are swiftly taken into custody, processed, and removed from the United States consistent with our laws and policy," DHS said in
a statement.

While some of those seeking jobs and safety have been making their way to the United States for weeks or months, it is only in recent days that the number converging on Del Rio, Texas, has drawn widespread attention, posing a humanitarian and political challenge for the Biden administration.

DHS said that in response to the more than 10,000 migrants sheltering under the Del Rio International Bridge that connects the city with Ciudad Acuña in Mexico, it was accelerating flights to Haiti and other destinations within the next 72 hours.

It said it was working with nations where the migrants began their journeys - for many of the Haitians, countries such as Brazil and Chile -
to accept returned migrants.

And it said U.S. Customs and Border Protection was sending 400 additional agents to the Del Rio sector
in the coming days, after the border agency said on Friday that due to the influx it was temporarily closing the city's port of entry and re-routing traffic to Eagle Pass, 57 miles (92 km) east.

"We have reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey," a DHS spokesperson told Reuters.

Lafortune Similen, a 40-year-old Haitian, reached
the border with his wife and two-year-old daughter after a six-week trip through Mexico. He and his
wife Marisose Molestine, 38, who said they left
Chile because of racism and poor work prospects,
said they did not know what would happen to them
after they reached the U.S. banks of the Rio Grande.

"I heard they were sending people back, I saw on Facebook," Similen said before the family waded into the river, knee-deep along this stretch.

But Wilson, a 40-year-old Haitian who gave only one name, said he had seen a message on Facebook that people were being allowed into the United States.

"That's why we came," said Wilson, who reached the border with his wife and daughter on Saturday morning. He said he had been working in construction in Chile.

As it became clear U.S. authorities were sending migrants back to homelands beyond Mexico, Mexican police officers began asking migrants who were buying food in Ciudad Acuña to return to the
United States side of the river on Saturday morning, witnesses told Reuters. The migrants argued they needed supplies, and police eventually relented.

On the Texas side, Haitians have been joined by Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans sheltering
in squalid conditions under the Del Rio bridge.

Officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border
said the majority of the migrants were Haitians.

An en masse expulsion of Haitians at Del Rio is sure to anger immigration advocates who say such returns are inhumane considering the conditions in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. In July, the president was assassinated, and in August a major earthquake and powerful storm hit the country.

The Biden administration extended deportation relief to around 150,000 Haitians in the United States with Temporary Protected Status earlier this year. That program does not apply to new arrivals. Deportation and expulsion differ technically - expulsion is much quicker.

U.S. officials briefly halted removals to Haiti following the Aug. 14 earthquake.

The number of Haitian migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border has been steadily rising this year along with an overall increase, according to CBP data.

Many of the Haitians interviewed by Reuters said they used to live in South America and were headed north now because they could not attain legal status or struggled to secure decent jobs.

More than a dozen Haitians in southern Mexico's Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, told Reuters on Friday that messages in
----WhatsApp groups spread lies about the ease of crossing the border.

((ahaa- seems a great many came because facebook and WhatsApp etc people/posts told them to come that is was easy-- ahaa yah how did that work out for them ahaa))

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

ASSOCIATED PRESS
09/19/2021 12:55 PM EDT
Updated: 09/19/2021 06:48 PM EDT

DEL RIO, Texas — The U.S. flew Haitians camped in a Texas border town back to their homeland Sunday and tried blocking others from crossing the border from Mexico in a massive show of force that signaled the beginning of what could be one of
_America’s swiftest, large-scale expulsions of
migrants or refugees in decades.

Three flights with 145 passengers each arrived in Port-au-Prince, and Haiti said six flights were expected Tuesday. In all, U.S. authorities moved
to expel many of the more 12,000 migrants camped around a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, after crossing
from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.

The only obvious parallel for such an expulsion without an opportunity to seek asylum was in 1991, when the Coast Guard intercepted Haitian refugees
at sea and sent them to a camp in Guantanamo Bay after the overthrow of the Caribbean nation’s president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said Yael Schacher, senior U.S. advocate at Refugees International whose doctoral studies focused on the history of U.S. asylum law.

Similarly large numbers of Mexicans have been sent home during peak years of immigration but over land and not so suddenly.

U.S. launches mass expulsion of Haitian migrants from Texas.

Since Friday, 3,300 migrants have already been removed from the Del Rio camp to planes or detention centers, Border Patrol Chief Raul L. Ortiz said Sunday.
He expected to have 3,000 of the approximately 12,600 remaining migrants moved within a day, and aimed for the rest to be be gone within the week.

“We are working around the clock to expeditiously move migrants out of the heat, elements and from underneath this bridge to our processing facilities in order to quickly process and remove individuals from the United States consistent with our laws and our policies,” Ortiz said at news conference at the Del Rio bridge. The Texas city of about 35,000 people sits roughly 145 miles west of San Antonio.

The U.S. expected to double daily flights soon to
at least six, according to a U.S. official who was
not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Departure cities were still being determined
Sunday.

The rapid expulsions were made possible by a pandemic-related authority adopted by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 that
allows for migrants to be immediately removed
from the country without an opportunity to seek asylum. President Joe Biden exempted unaccompanied children from the order but
let the rest stand.

Haitian migrants revolt in custody and seize control of privately contracted bus
Anna Giaritelli
Tue, September 21, 2021, 9:41 AM

DEL RIO, Texas — Haitian migrants who were being transported on a federally contracted private bus away from the border revolted during the ride and overtook control of the commercial vehicle before escaping, according to two law enforcement officials.

A large white bus bound for San Antonio, Texas, was overtaken Monday afternoon during the two-and-a-half-hour trip from the international bridge in Del Rio. The migrants on board had been picked up from the makeshift migrant camp, where thousands are waiting to be taken into custody, two federal law enforcement agents told the Washington Examiner.

"They did break out of the bus, and they did escape," a senior federal law enforcement official confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

It is not clear which federal agency, Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was overseeing the transport. CBP initially apprehends, transports, and processes illegal immigrants, while ICE is responsible for longer-term detention and removal from the country. Neither agency responded to requests for comment.

However, ICE told a local media outlet that "several noncitizens attempted to flee the contracted bus."

The two people who confirmed the incident said law enforcement searched for the escapees and recaptured them.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

ahaa all those Haitian migrants -
they moved on info on Facebook..
Thousands of posts telling that
America opened the border to them as a huminatary deed.
So, them reading facebook they came to a rude awaking.
And now they are being sent back
ahha gotta luv facebooks power..

» New Mexico governor withdraws National Guard from border
» Illegal border crossings most in over decade with four months to go
» No good answers for Biden as voters recoil over border crossings
» Migrant Caravans Head to U.S. Border in Early Test for Biden
» Governor of Texas is Spreading BS/Lies.