‘Those people will pay’: Biden warns Border Protection agents will face ‘consequences’ for debunked claim they ‘strapped’ migrants, despite photographer saying he saw no such thing – as Kamala compares it to SLAVERY
- President Joe Biden vowed the border agents on horseback who chased migrants trying to cross the Southern border will ‘pay’
- He called the photos of agents on horseback chasing migrants ‘horrible to see’
- ‘I promise you those people will pay,’ he said
- But he didn’t address the greater situation at the border, where thousands of migrants are camped out as they wait to see if they can get into US
- Photographer Paul Ratje, who took the pics, said his images were dramatically misinterpreted
- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the agents will not continue to use horses at the border as part of their patrols
- Progressive Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus were particularly outraged by the images, comparing them to slavery
President Joe Biden on Friday vowed the border agents on horseback who tried to stop migrants crossing the into the US will ‘pay’ and face the ‘consequences’ of their actions.
The president called the photos of agents on horseback intercepting migrants ‘horrible to see’.
However the photographer who took the controversial images said the border agents did not whip the Haitian migrants – after it was wrongly and widely reported that they did.
Biden, who failed to address how to solve the border crisis in his remarks, said: ‘It was horrible what to see, as you saw, to see people treat like they did – horses running them over, people being strapped.
‘It’s outrageous. I promise you those people will pay. There will be investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment.
‘But beyond an embarrassment is dangerous, it’s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world, and sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.
He was slammed by Meghan McCain in her DailyMail.com column who blamed him for encouraging the 15,000 Haitian migrants to come to the US.
‘But if Biden started actively sending migrants home, he would offend The Squad and their progressive constituencies whose wrath seems to terrify him,’ she said.
Photographer Paul Ratje, who took the images, said he didn’t see anyone being whipped.
‘I’ve never seen them whip anyone,’ Ratje told KTSM-TV. The still images actually depict the mounted agents swinging the long reins of their horses, not holding whips.
‘He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture,’ said Ratje, who shot the photos from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river.
It came as Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday compared the images to the brutality of slavery.
Harris went beyond earlier comments labeling the treatment ‘horrible,’ during an appearance on ABC’s ‘The View,’ after the agents who were photographed seeking to corral Haitian immigrants were pulled back to the office amid an investigation.
‘Well, first of all, I’ve been very clear about the images that you and I both saw of those law enforcement officials on horses – I was outraged by it. It was horrible and and deeply troubling. There’s been now an investigation that has been conducted, which I fully support and there needs to be consequences and accountability.’
‘Human beings should not be treated that way and as we all know it also evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country. Has been used against African Americans during times of slavery, and so I’m glad to know that that [Alejandro] Mayorkas the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is taking it very seriously,’ she said.
President Joe Biden vowed the border agents on horseback who chased migrants trying to cross the Southern border will ‘pay’
Civil Rights leaders and progressive politicians erupted after images emerged of Border Patrol agents lashing horse reins in the direction of migrants while ramping up deportation and deterrent efforts
The photographer who took the images said they have been dramatically misinterpreted
Progressive Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus were particularly outraged by the images, also comparing them to slavery.
White House officials have publicly condemned the photos and officials met with black lawmakers to reassure them they were taking the matter seriously. But Friday marked Biden’s first public comments on the situation.
Images emerged earlier this week of U.S. Custom and Border patrol agents on horseback using their reins to chase after migrants, the majority of who were Haitians. Critics compared the photos – there was no video footage – to images of slavery, accusing agents of whipping people.
Agents insist they were not using whips against the migrants, 15,000 of whom set up a makeshift camp underneath and around the Del Rio International Bridge over the last few weeks.
They argued they were only using the reins to ward off immigrants.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the agents will not use horses at the border while the incident is investigated.
And he revealed on Friday that there were no longer any migrants in the camp underneath the Del Rio International Bridge.
‘Nearly 30,000 Migrants have been encountered at Del Rio, since September 9 with the highest number one time reaching approximately 15,000. Today, we have no migrants remaining in the camp,’ he said during an appearance in the White House daily press briefing.
He comment came amid confusion about where the Haitians are going. Some have been puts on flights back to their country. Others have been released in the United States while their asylum cases are reviewed. But it remains unanswered about where a few thousand of them are located.
‘Human beings should not be treated that way and as we all know it also evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history,’ VP Kamala Harris said on ABC’s ‘The View’ when asked about border agents using horses to push back Haitian immigrants
The remnants of the encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge are seen on Friday after it was largely cleared out
U.S. Border Patrol agents watch as Haitian immigrant families cross the Rio Grande from into Del Rio, Texas on Thursday from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. Mexican immigration officials had launched an operation in a small migrant camp on the Mexican side of the river and many families, fearing deportation, surged across the border to take their chances on the U.S. side
Official vehicles line a dirt road along the Rio Grande on Friday in Del Rio where they are the lookout for illegal crossings
In Mexico, Haitian immigrants waited to cross the Rio Grande on Thursday. The camp on the Mexican side has been growing, though Mexican officials have surrounded it and are telling migrants they will be deported to Haiti if they enter the US
DHS said on Thursday that of the 15,000 under the bridge: 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
This left 5,000 unaccounted for. Mayorkas has now indicated that 2,000 have been released, but mystery still surrounds the whereabouts of the further 3,000.
Mayorkas was asked repeatedly about how many Haitians have been released into the US pending the outcome of their immigration proceedings – and repeatedly declined to provide a specific numerical figure.
‘We believe it is a very small percentage of the total that assembled in Del Rio Texas, and that will be removed,’ Mayorkas responded, on a day when the US special envoy for Haiti resigned in protest of US policy on deportations.
The squalid border camp which held up to 15,000 at one point last weekend has now shrunk to under 3,000, as immigration officials rushed to release thousands of migrants into the US, but another camp is growing across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
The camp had swelled to some 15,000 migrants at one point, with thousands seen wading across the Rio Grande River daily. Many are Haitians who were previously granted asylum in Chile, with some Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans also present.
Mexican forces have surrounded a second camp that is growing on the Mexican side of the border, where some migrants are gathering to assess their chances of successfully entering the US illegally.
U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday, claiming: ‘I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti’
Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) is starting to return migrants to the southern Mexican city of Tapachula so they can file asylum applications there.
‘We’re not taking them out of the country,’ INM chief Francisco Garduno told Reuters. ‘We’re bringing them away from the border so there are no hygiene and overcrowding problems.’
Telling migrants eyeing the U.S. side of the border that it would be better to process claims before the media disappeared from Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna, INM agents swept through the camp on Thursday beseeching them to go back to Tapachula.
‘We’re giving you this option,’ INM official Montserrat Saldana told a cluster of migrants circled around her. ‘All of you who cross the river are going straight to Haiti.’
Meanwhile, US special envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday because he didn’t want to be involved with the ‘inhumane’ deportation of Haitian migrants.
‘I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,’ Ambassador Foote wrote in his resignation letter.
In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been ‘ignored and dismissed’.
‘Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,’ Foote continued, ‘and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.’
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that DHS will no longer allow the use of horses in Del Rio after outcry over images showing agents on horseback appearing to use whips on a crowd of migrants
Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Thursday, September 23
A State Department spokesperson accused Foote of ‘mischaracterizing the circumstances of his resignation’ and said some of his ideas were deemed ‘harmful.’
‘[A]ll proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process,’ a statement from the spokesperson reads. ‘Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process.’
‘For him to to say that his proposals were ignored is simply false,’ the person added.
The statement claims: ‘It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation.’
Psaki reiterated the sentiments from the statement during her Thursday briefing, saying: ‘I’m not going to detail that further.’
Foote blamed Biden for making things worse in Haiti by backing the ‘unelected’ leader after the coup, claiming that ‘picking the winner’ will produce ‘catastrophic results’.
‘Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his ‘political agreement’ over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society,’ he wrote.
Foote added: ‘The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner – again – is impressive.’
‘This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results,’ he said. ‘The negative impact to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.’
This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection.
Ticket to America: Haitian migrants are being DUMPED at a border gas station in the US after gaining entry to the US with color-coded passes: Up to 3K remain under the bridge and another camp has sprung up in Mexico
US officials are using color-coded tickets to grant Haitian migrants entry into the US, and are releasing many of the migrants at a gas station near the border that is used as a Greyhound bus stop.
Migrants with blue or yellow tickets, signifying families and pregnant women respectively, are being released, while single men with red passes and single women with green ones are slated for deportation, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Meanwhile, the Stripes gas station in Del Rio, Texas has become a major point for releasing those with blue or yellow tickets, as the business is used as a Greyhound stop for onward travel.
Large government-contracted buses drop off families twice a day at the gas station on a busy commercial road in the middle of town, according to the Washington Examiner.
A migrant mother carries her child while after being released at the Stripes gas station in Del Rio this week. The gas station is used as a Greyhound bus stop
A Haitian man in Mexico shows the blue ticket with the number he was given by authorities on the US side of the border. Unaware that blue and yellow tickets granted them entry into the US, many migrants with those tickets fled back to Mexico in fear of deportation to Haiti
Many migrants appear to be unaware of the meaning of the tickets, which are apparently not explained to them by authorities.
As the squalid migrant camp in Del Rio swelled to as many as 15,000 migrants last weekend, the Border Patrol issued them the color-coded, numbered tickets, then called their numbers and loaded them aboard buses and vans, some for expulsion flights, others for release.
Fearing deportation as the Biden administration began sending flights to Haiti, many migrants fled back across the border to Mexico, clutching the blue or yellow passes that would have allowed them to be quickly released.
The Biden administration has released at least 2,000 of the migrants despite vowing to expel them at the height of the crisis.
Mackenson Veillard was one of them, and was dropped off at the Stripes gas station earlier this week with his pregnant wife.
They waited together for a Greyhound bus to take them to a cousin in San Antonio after receiving their color coded-tickets to enter the US.
Mackenson Veillard ponders his good fortune as he waits at the Stripes gas station in Del Rio for a bus to take him and his pregnant wife to San Antonio
Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. board a bus to Houston after being released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Del Rio on Thursday
A migrant woman receives her bus ticket before boarding a Greyhound bus to San Antonio, Texas on Wednesday in Del Rio, Texas
The couple had spent a a week in the cramped migrant camp under the International Bridge, sleeping on concrete and getting by on bread and bottled water.
‘I felt so stressed,’ Veillard, 25, told the AP. ‘But now, I feel better. It’s like I’m starting a new life.’
Most Haitians released from the camp received requests to report to immigration officials at their destinations within 60 days.
A few received notices to appear in immigration court on a specific date.
On Friday, only 225 migrants remained in the nearly empty camp where up to 15,000 had crammed in squalid conditions last weekend, according to Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens.
Owens told the AP in a text message that he´s been told all of the migrants will be removed by the end of the day.
The camp’s population peaked Saturday as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing trying to seek asylum.
Squalid Del Rio camp starts to be cleared as DHS chief finally admits 2,000 migrants have been released into the US but fails to address where up to 3,000 missing migrants are located
Aerial photos of the Haitian migrant camp in Del Rio along the Texas border taken less than a week apart show the drastic reduction in size.
As recently as this weekend, there were about 15,000 Haitians in Del Rio hoping to get asylum in the United States after they fled their country that has been torn apart by political turmoil following the Haitian president’s assassination and an earthquake that killed at least 2,200.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on CNN that as many as 2,000 Haitians had been released into the US pending hearings – but failed to identify where the remaining 3,000 are.
The revelation came after the DHS revealed that of the 15,000 total; 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are still camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
This left 5,000 unaccounted for. Now Mayorkas appears to have addressed where 2,000 of them are, but that still leaves 3,000 missing from official figures.
Haitian migrants take shelter along the Del Rio International Bridge at sunset as they await to be processed after crossing the Rio Grande river into the U.S. from Ciudad Acuna in Del Rio, Texas on September 19
The area where about 14,000 mainly-Haitian migrants were camping along the Del Rio International Bridge is seen on Thursday. A large portion of the makeshift camp was cleared after as authorities continue to process and remove the people
Mayorkas was asked repeatedly about how many Haitians have been released into the US pending the outcome of their immigration proceedings – and repeatedly declined to provide a specific numerical figure.
‘We believe it is a very small percentage of the total that assembled in Del Rio Texas, and that will be removed,’ Mayorkas responded, on a day when the US special envoy for Haiti resigned in protest of US policy on deportations.
Rep. Tony Gonzales – a Texas Republican who whose district encompasses Del Rio – ripped Mayorkas and said he was trying to ‘bulls**t’ him.
‘No, don’t tell me, ‘Everything’s under control.’ It’s not under control,’ Gonzales told the Washington Examiner.
‘You can bulls**t somebody else, but you can’t bulls**t me,’ he told The Washington Examiner. ‘It was kind of like, dismissive a little bit, and that’s a problem, especially when you’re talking about national security. Like, there are no second chances. You have to get it right every single time, or it’s game over.’
Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. cross the Rio Grande river into the U.S. after leaving a makeshift migrant camp
Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. cross the Rio Grande river into the U.S. after leaving makeshift migrant camp in Braulio Fernandez Ecological Park in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico on Thursday
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on a boat rescue a Haitian migrant woman from the Rio Grande river at the Mex ico-US border near Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on Thursday
Sources told the Washington Examiner that the Biden administration had set a deadline of Friday night to have the camp completely cleared.
The order from the West Wing reportedly came amid concerns over a Black Lives Matter protest scheduled to take place near the bridge this weekend.
‘They don’t want them all riled up,’ an official told the paper, referring to U.S. authorities and the Haitian migrants respectively.
An official also said the order to clear the camp was partly to resolve an ‘optics’ problem.
They want those people out from under that bridge so they can’t be seen anymore,’ they said. ‘It’s an optics thing. They are moving them around for process and release. They’re going to have everyone at the bridge gone in the next two days.’
Homeland Security had planned to ramp up to seven daily flights but flew only three Wednesday and five Thursday because of issues with contractors and mechanical delays, the official told the Associated Press.
Seven flights were scheduled to Haiti on Friday, six on Saturday and seven on Sunday.
During Thursday evening’s interview with CNN, interviewer Wolf Blitzer noted that about 15,000 Haitians had gathered and press Mayorkas to account for all 5,000.
Mayorkas ran through the numbers, and Blitzer followed up with, ‘What about the rest?’
DHS Secretary Mayorkas said Thursday that 10-15 percent of 15,000 Haitians gathered at the bridge in Del Rio, Texas have been released into the country pending their immigration hearings but failed to say where 3,000 unaccounted migrants are
‘If it’s 10 percent, or 15, I don’t have the precise numbers,’ Mayorkas responded. That would put the figure between 1,500 and 2,250 – although Mayorkas avoided specifics.
‘I assure you it’s a minority of the individuals, for the reasons that I have articulated, and they are placed in immigration enforcement proceedings, where they are able, where they appear before a judge. And if in fact they make a valid claim to remain in the United States, then of course, we honor that and if not they are removed as well,’ he continued.
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