Haitian Immigrants, Fleeing Crisis, Converge at the US-Mexico Border

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Brian Lehrer: It's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. This, as you've been hearing on the news today, is the day of President Biden's first speech as president and to the UN General Assembly. Almost every other world leader is really glad he's not Donald Trump, but they've also got questions. Why weren't they consulted more closely about the plan to leave Afghanistan, which turned out to be based on faulty intelligence about how safe it would be?

Why is the US charging ahead with booster shots for vaccinated Americans when so many countries don't have first doses? Excuse me as I had to cough at just the wrong moment. Why did the US strike that nuclear submarine deal with Australia last week cutting the legs out of France's submarine contract down under and without prior notice when France is one of our closest allies?

How much leadership in climate change is Biden really going to show? While Joe Biden is definitely not Donald Trump, if you close your eyes and imagine it's 2018 again, this could have been Trump's Homeland Security secretary speaking yesterday at the US-Mexico border.

Alejandro Mayorkas: 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 lives.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that was Joe Biden's Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking near the border yesterday in Del Rio, Texas issuing that warning. Not to central Americans as Trump's people did so many times, but to Haitians who have suddenly come in large numbers. You know about the Haiti earthquake and hurricane and presidential assassination of the last few months.

One of the things about this story is that many of the new Haitian migrants haven't lived in Haiti in years. We'll get to that, but maybe you saw the disturbing video footage on TV yesterday of large numbers of Haitian migrants huddled under a border bridge in Del Rio for temporary shelter or the US border patrol people on horseback, pushing them back like cattle.

Biden's people actually had to deny they were using whips on the crowd, which is what some of the horseback footage looks like. Or maybe you heard about how the number of Haitians now estimated around 13,000 to 16,000 equals a third of the local population of Del Rio, the Texas town they're congregating in, so what's happening and what's the responsible and moral thing for the Biden administration to do?

With me now, we have Natalie Kitroeff, New York Times Caribbean and Central America correspondent, and Buzzfeed News national security and immigration reporter Adolfo Flores who is down there and whose latest article is called Thousands of Haitians Lack Food, Water and Medicine at A Bleak US-Mexico Border Camp. Adolfo and Natalie, thank you very much for your time. Welcome to WNYC today.

Adolfo Flores: Thanks for having us.

Natalie Kitroeff: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get into details of the situation and invite phone calls, primarily for many Haitian listeners who might know somebody there or have other thoughts, Adolfo, even the title of your article suggests that how discuss immigration in a situation like this depends on who we care about. Your headline centers the migrants themselves; Thousands of Haitians Lack Food, Water, and Medicine at A Bleak US-Mexico Border Camp.

The Wall Street Journal headline on this today is very different. It says, US Flies Haitian Migrants Home in Bid to Manage Border Crisis. The journal starting point is that the border has a crisis, yours is that thousands of people do. Can you describe the camp that you refer to in your headline?

Adolfo Flores: Yes, it's an outdoor camp. The images you'll see is you'll see lot of people underneath the bridge, but there's a lot of brush, and in that brush, are little houses made out of bamboo and leaves that they've tied together to shield from the sun, but there really is no order to it. The trash is growing by the day and while people there get food from DHS, it's not enough.

I was there Sunday at 1:00 PM there, they got taco and bottled water, but it's nearly a hundred degrees, it's in the high 90s. There's lots of children who are sick or just wanted something to drink, so the parents are having to give the kids whatever they get, and still, it's not enough.

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, I see you are based in Mexico for the New York times, how did the people in the camp get across the Rio Grande River?

Natalie Kitroeff: This is something that's been building for months and months and months now, and in Mexico where a lot of the migrants have cross through, officials say that most of them are not coming directly from Haiti. They're coming from South American countries, Chile and Brazil, Mexican officials say where they were already settled. These migrants have made a really long and often arduous journey sometimes through this treacherous jungle known as the Darién Gap.

This can be a month's long journey by foot that is really, really dangerous, and they also have to make it through Mexico, which isn't necessarily a safe country for migrants that are transiting through. For many people, you saw these numbers starting to rise really in May, and so many of these people have been coming for a long time now, and this is the culmination of that trip.

Brian Lehrer: Adolfo, you quote one 27-year-old Haitian parent by the name of Lorvens who has a one-year-old daughter fighting a fever and diarrhea saying this is worse than being in prison. For the many Americans whose response to this whole story might be "You chose to come here voluntarily and illegally," do what Lorvens was fleeing from Chile in his case that they was worse than the risks of this crossing?

Adolfo Flores: Yes, well, they left Haiti because of the extreme poverty and instability and he went to Chile to try to make a life there. He thought that that'd be possible, but eventually, he realized he can't legalize the status there, he's not being paid enough to support his family in Chile, let alone the family members back home who depend on him, so he figured the only way to try to support them is to get to the US. For them, there is no going back because they're not going back to anything that will allow them to support themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, Lorvens' story from Adolfo's article suggests this different narrative that you alluded to a minute ago, that many people here might assume, especially up north where I am where people might just see this on TV. We know Haiti just had an earthquake, a hurricane, and violent political turmoil that's ongoing, but it's not so much people coming right from Haiti as people, like Lorvens from Adolfo's article, who left years ago for South America like he writes Lorvens move from Haiti to Chile in 2015, and only now came to Texas. What's that story? What's the largest story here of this three-point migration?

Natalie Kitroeff: The big picture here is that Latin America is in crisis just like much of the world; reeling from a pandemic, a global recession. Countries like Brazil and Chile, their economies have been battered by the coronavirus. In Chile, you've also seen an increasingly restrictive immigration policy led by President Sebastián Piñera who's tighten border controls, visa rules.

I was at the border before all of this exploded into the public eye in Metamora where there are tons of Haitians, and a lot of those folks said that their visas had expired and they couldn't renew them or they had lost their job just like Adolfo was saying. There are a lot of people who just cannot make ends meet in South America.

When we think about the migration flows to the northern border at this point, you got to think, not only about the immediate once in a lifetime moment that Haiti is living right now, where there's the assassination of a president and an earthquake, which is leading people to leave but you also have to look more broadly at where Latin America is at this particular moment.

Right at our border, you have a Western Hemisphere that is a lot of it in crisis, in economic crisis, and in the case of Chile where the government has started to turn to a more restrictive view toward the immigrants inside its border. What it's building and what could come to the United States are people who are desperate for all sorts of reasons.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, any Haitians or Haitian Americans listening right now, help us report this story, 646-435-7280. Do you have any connections to anyone in Del Rio, Texas, or anyone trying to get there? 646-435-7280, or maybe you can help describe the conditions that deported Haitians might encounter if they are forced back there, 646-435-7280. Or maybe you can help explain who all these Haitians are who had already migrated to Chile and elsewhere in South America as Natalie was just describing and why that was and why they'd be trying to come here in large numbers all of a sudden now.

Maybe tell us a story of someone you know, or maybe you just have a question for our guests. Adolfo Flores, national security and immigration reporter for Buzzfeed News in Del Rio, Texas, and Natalie Kitroeff, who covers Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean for the New York Times. Adolfo's in Texas, Natalie is in Mexico, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Adolfo, in the case of Central Americans, many of the undocumented migrants come seeking political asylum from oppression or violence. How many of this group are seeking asylum and on what grounds?

Adolfo Flores: Of all the people I spoke with, the Haitians, none of them have mentioned asylum. They've all really just spoke about the economic conditions back home, but also the violence. The gangs in Haiti have really taken control and they say it's just very dangerous, but the dimension of asylum or any type of refuge it hasn't really come up. Much of it has been the need to feed their families.

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, anything to add to that? I do notice that, and Adolfo I know has reported on this, that the Biden administration has chosen to keep in place at least one of Trump's controversial border policies, a pandemic health order called Title 42. Can you talk about the grounds on which these Haitian migrants are seeking admission to the United States?

Natalie Kitroeff: I think what's important here to remember is something that Adolfo just brought up, which is that Haiti is really in a moment of unprecedented crisis and it's not just because of these two events. Gang violence has risen and really taken over much of Haiti, and so when the Biden administration began deporting on mass mutation migrants, what you saw on the ground in Port-au-Prince, what my colleagues have reported there, is that they're coming back in many cases to a country that one, they don't know, they haven't been in for years and years and years.

They may have family members, yes they were born there, but it's not somewhere where they have these roots at the moment. It's a country that is convulsed by the gang violence and political instability, plus, a natural disaster that has really destroyed a lot of infrastructure in Southern Peninsula, so you have folks who may not have a home to return to.

While, as you said, the Biden administration has kept in place the Title 42 provision that allows them to swiftly deport migrants based on public health considerations, what's happening here, while the migrants may not be claiming political asylum or refugee status, they're going back to a country that is really not equipped at this particular moment to receive people on mass. You've seen the Haitian government pretty clearly protest this policy by the Biden administration.

Brian Lehrer: I see that your latest article on this, Natalie is titled How Hope, Fear, and Misinformation Led Thousands of Haitians to the US Border. Excuse me, sorry, what kinds of misinformation?

Natalie Kitroeff: When you talk to the migrants that I spoke to that were in Metamora, a lot of folks are receiving the same kinds of messages that Central Americans have received since Mr. Biden took office, which is, as the administration moved to dismantle Trump, some of his harsher migration policies, the message was spread, both by traffickers, but also by informal networks of migrants and of would be migrants.

There was this sense also among Haitians that the contrast alone between Biden and Trump was enough to send this message that they would be welcomed if they tried to reach the border. When the Biden administration extended temporary protected status for Haitians, which only extended protected status for Haitians who were already in the country, there were rumors, there were folks who believed that that was an open door for them.

My colleagues who were Port-au-Prince at the time saw Haitians coming with their children and bags and believing that they were going to win entry into the country and that they were going to be given humanitarian visas. There is a lot of misinformation in these networks. There is early signals sent by the Biden administration when it went to pursue a more progressive path on migration that were taken by people in the region as an invitation, in many cases. Not in all cases, but it is certainly been pervasive among people that I've seen.

Brian Lehrer: Adolfo, would someone like the guy Lorvens from your article who just made the trip from Chile after living there since 2015 be deported back to Chile or to Haiti?

Adolfo Flores: That is a good question because I'm also asking that same question. My guess is that they would be deported back to Haiti because they don't have legal status in Chile. I'm not sure that the Chilean government would be able to take them back.

Brian Lehrer: That's weird though, right?

Adolfo Flores: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, do you have any information on that like if these people were legal residents of Chile?

Natalie Kitroeff: That's what you're seeing, you're seeing the administration is just deporting them to Haiti. What you're seeing in Haiti right now is that, first of all, they expect thousands to arrive over the coming weeks, the Haitian, and the people that are coming there are people who lived in Central and South America. They're not people who were just in Haiti.

This is what's what's happening, and obviously, the difficulty there for the Haitian government, which is still trying to establish critical mandate after this assassination and a lot of upheaval that followed is they have to work to process thousands of people coming in who may not have seen their family members in Haiti for decades.

It would be difficult for Haiti in any circumstances for any country in any circumstances, but this is a moment of acute crisis in the country right now. What Adolfo is describing, that is the norm, that is what's happening and it remains to be seen how that plays out on the ground in Haiti.

Brian Lehrer: For Natalie Kitroeff, from the New York Times in Mexico and Adolfo Flores from Buzzfeed News in Del Rio, Texas 646-435-7280. Evelyn in

The Bronx, you're on WNYC. Evelyn, thank you for calling in.

Evelyn: Thank you so much for having me. Good morning, everyone. The comment that I wanted to make is that, if the Biden Administration really wants to stop the flow of Haitian migrants in the US, I was born in Haiti, but I came to the US very young. I did two masters here and I just finished law school last Saturday, so I'm talking from that perspective, somebody who has a master's in diplomacy, in international relation, a master's in business administration and now a lawyer.

I'm talking from those perspectives. If the Biden administration really wants to stop the flow of Haitian migrants to the US, then they need to help us stop the corruption that's currently going on in Haiti. You have elected officials that come into power, all they want to do is to line up their pockets with funds that should be invested in infrastructure. We need to look at those politicians, how much money do they have invested abroad? If they cannot account for how they receive those funds, freeze those assets, return those money back to Haiti.

Let's invest in infrastructure, let's invest in schools, in hospitals, then you're going to create jobs. Haitians will want to stay home. Haitians don't want to leave Haiti and go abroad, they're looking for a better life. They're not lazy, they're entrepreneurs, they want to work, but the setting has to be there for them to be able to work. You have all these politicians with hundreds of millions of dollars, let us look into those people. The Biden administration can start there.

You have the UN in Haiti, what is the UN doing? Haiti has crumbled, it fell apart under the UN's watch. Things got worse. Now Haiti's been ruled by bandits and you have a UN group in Haiti, so-called. I don't know what work they're doing. Let's look at the big picture, not just Haitians fleeing poverty. No, look at the big picture. What is the Biden administration doing now to help stop corruption so the money can stay in Haiti so it can be invested, create jobs? What is the UN really doing?

You have gangsters running Haiti. People can get to work, they can get to school, so what's their role? Let's look at the bigger picture before we can talk about migrants fleeing for a better life trying to make a better life for their family.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you.

Evelyn: I'll take any questions that you have. I did immigration law, book that class so you can ask me any question you want.

Brian Lehrer: Congratulations on your new brand new law degree, first of all.

Evelyn: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you this question, Evelyn, that would be, what role do you want for the international community? I get calls sometimes from Haitian-Americans who say hands off Haiti, the UN has come in and messed things up in the way you were just describing, the US has come in repeatedly and messed things up, so is it better for the international community to withdraw from Haiti, or do you want them, in a certain respect, to play corruption cop in a more aggressive way, and what would that look like?

Evelyn: Thank you for that question. That is such a great question. Thank you for carrying enough to want to ask that question. Haitians want accountability for the money from PetroCaribe that Venezuela had given Haiti a ton of help. Politicians here in the US, and they know who they are, I'm not going to call them out, politicians here in the us, politicians there in Haiti squandered that money.

Why not start with investigation there, find out what happened to the billions of dollars that Haiti were supposed to have in its conference to help with the development of Haiti? Venezuela gave Haiti a huge amount of help. Let's start finding out what the funds are, where people have stolen money from Haiti, help us bring that money back. That's the role the international community can play because we can't do it.

We don't have the assets to go after these people. Help Haiti find every single dollar that have been squandered from the coffers of Haiti. We can start there. That's why the UN there lost course. I don't know what they're doing in Haiti, they need to get out of Haiti if they're not helping Haitians because you have bandits, kidnappers running rampant kidnapping women and children, sexually exploiting women and young boys too.

What is the UN doing? Tell me what role are they playing. I would really love to ask them that question face to face. I am someone who's been trying to help Haiti any way I can. I am powerless to do the things that I want to do. That's why I went to law school to help immigrants, not just Haitians. People at the borders whose kids who have being ripped apart from them. That's why I went to school to advocate for people.

When I get a chance, I want to face the folks at the UN face to face and ask them, "Have you been helping Haiti or have you been hindering in the process?" That's my question to them

Brian Lehrer: Evelyn, thank you so much for your call and please do call us again. Natalie Kitroeff from the New York Times, a very confident Evelyn calling in with her thoughts and offering herself up as if a guest to take follow-up questions, which she just did from me. For you who covers the Caribbean and Central American Mexico on a regular basis, I'm curious what you were thinking as you listened to Evelyn's call and her bigger picture about corruption in the international community.

Natalie Kitroeff: I think Evelyn basically beautifully summarized the view of many, many Haitians, which is frustration and anger. When you see Haitians streaming across the border to the United States, many Haitian-Americans and also in Haitians in Haiti say what are the US policies that have helped lead to this situation and the international community as well? The most recent iteration of this, the United States has a long history of fail international policy in Haiti.

I don't think anybody even, within the US government would argue with that, but most recently, the president who was assassinated, Jovenel Moïse, in the months, years before he was assassinated, he was steadily tightening his grip on power, gang violence was getting out of control, and successive administration, the Trump administration, and then the Biden administration both supported either tacitly or overtly his administration.

At the time, Haiti was involved in protest and protestors could not believe that the United States would not come out against this guy. Now for the United States. The question was, okay, what is the best way to maintain stability? What the US saw both administrations was that the best way was to support this president and to keep him in power. He had been elected, let him stay in power, but the reality on the ground is the conditions were deteriorating.

This is just most recent, as I said, in a long line of moves from the United States and the rest of the international community to support leaders who do not have the confidence and the trust exploitations and who most Haitians believe are exactly what Evelyn described; people who are not representing them and not representing their interests in that situation in which people don't believe [inaudible 00:26:31].

Brian Lehrer: Natalie's line is breaking up a little bit. Adolfo Flores from Buzzfeed, let me turn back to you, and ask back to the situation on the ground. The Wall Street Journal article today says, "Thanks to an influx of border patrol agents working with Texas law enforcement, US authorities have about half the bridge," that's the Del Rio to Mexico bridge where so many of these Haitian migrants have congregated under the bridge, they have about half the bridge under control. What does under control mean from their vantage point?

Adolfo Flores: I don't know because when I was, it was Saturday and Sunday, the only US authorities in the camp were, I counted about seven, maybe five border patrol agents on horses. Other than that, there was no one else going into the camp. The National Guard and DPS, they were on the outskirts of the camp keeping everyone inside because they weren't letting them leave into Mexico.

Brian Lehrer: What's the role of the agents on horseback in this scene? This is the clip that a lot of our listeners probably saw on TV yesterday. Some of those agents on horseback seeming to physically use the horses, rearing up a little bit and everything or walking into the crowd to try to push people back. Were they really using whips to physically push Haitians back behind some kind of line? It appeared like that on first blush on these videos. The Biden administration said, "No, that was just the flicking of the reins of the horses. What can you tell us?

Adolfo Flores: I didn't see it, but I spoke to some photographers who were on the Mexican banks who saw this and they said that the whip was only used on the horse to control the horse. I did ask them, well, did the border patrol agent crack the whip in the air to scare the men trying to get in to the camp, and they said no. They did say that the yelling and the things that he said, and I don't know what they are, were out of line.

They said that that definitely was out of line. There's still a lot of questions like, what was a point of doing that? What were they going to do, put them on a horse? I'm curious to see how the investigation that the US government is undertaking turns out.

Brian Lehrer: The town of Del Rio is said to have a usual population of less than 40,000 residents. 15,000-ish migrants suddenly arriving is obviously a lot. Texas governor, Greg Abbot, asked for federal help saying the numbers are overwhelming local law enforcement health services. Have you reported on this aspect at all? Can you describe the effect on the people of Del Rio in general and the law enforcement and health needs of the migrants in particular from town services?

Adolfo Flores: In Del Rio, you don't actually really see the impact of the people being held under the bridge because they're not being released into the community. If there are, it's very low numbers. I saw maybe Saturday or Sunday seven Cubans were released to a local community center, but there is more of a police and military presence near the site.

In terms of the community itself, you're not really seeing that, but on the Mexican side like the downtown area of Ciudad Acuña, which is a side across from Del Rio, you do see Haitians go into the store to buy food, to get money out that's being wired to them. It's an interesting scene when you drive through the downtown area of Ciudad Acuña in Mexico, but it's now you don't see that as much because people are not allowed to leave. Though they still are able to through the river. It's just a little more dangerous now.

Brian Lehrer: Adolfo.

Adolfo Flores: Sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, finish your thought. Go ahead.

Adolfo Flores: In terms of the county, the city like health services, they are being used to an extent. I don't know how often. I spoke to a father yesterday whose 12-year-old daughter collapsed on Sunday from dehydration, so he took her to Border Patrol, and they took him and her to the local county hospital of [unintelligible 00:31:17] and the doctors diagnosed her with dehydration and they told the dad, "Just give her more water."

He questioned, "I would love to give her more water, but we don't have enough. I give her my water. I can't do the thing that you're asking me to do to keep my daughter from fainting."

Brian Lehrer: There, unfortunately, on that horror story, we leave it with BuzzFeed News national security and immigration reporter Adolfo Flores whose latest article is called Thousands of Haitians Lack Food, Water, and Medicine At A Bleak US-Mexico Border Camp, and Natalie Kitroeff,, who covers Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean for the New York Times. Natalie and Adolfo, thank you very much for explaining this story as much as you did.

Adolfo Flores: Thank you for having us.

Natalie Kitroeff: Thanks, Brian.

 

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