DHS Is Releasing Many Haitians from Del Rio Landing

Biden administration officials began quietly telling journalists Monday they will release many of the roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants in the Del Rio camp.

The releases will allow the migrants to take Americans’ jobs, to compete for housing, to ask for asylum and green cards, and to put their children into the crowded classrooms needed by ordinary American kids.

The Haitian catch and release process also will be displayed by Haitians’ cellphones and will encourage more Haitians to risk their children’s lives in the long trek to the U.S. border.

The quiet promises of catch-and-release are being hidden behind showcase video of small-scale deportations, and behind televised bluster from top officials, including Alejandro Mayorkas, the pro-migration chief of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Morgan Chesky, a reporter for NBC Nightly News, said September 20:

Senior DHS officials telling NBC News the administration will prioritize deporting single Haitian adults and families [who are] not claiming asylum. Unaccompanied children and most families asking for asylum can stay in the U.S.

Bill Melugin, at Fox News, tweeted September 19 that U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz “told me single adult men will be expelled via Title 42, but most family units will be processed and released into US.”

The Haitians “aren’t idiots … they’re rational actors,” responded Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:

They’re not cartoons in the imagination of some liberal do-gooder. They’re people who have a good sense of what they want and what the odds are … [So] if anyone who brings a child with him is exempted from the [deportation] rules, then sending back the single adults only [to Haiti] is not really sending the [deterrence] message that people think it is, because it is saying [to Haitians] “Always make damn sure you have a kid with you, and then we’ll let you go into the U.S.”

U.S. officials are expect to invite roughly 2 million legal and illegal migrants into the United States during 2021. The inflow will deliver roughly one migrant for every two American births. The flood of imported labor, consumers and renters will reduce Americans’ wages, raise their housing costs, and add more chaotic diversity into Americans’ fractured society. 

Families with children will be released into the United States, while couples without children will be sent back to Haiti, said Ali Bradley, an independent journalist at Del Rio. 

Officials also tell journalists that children who separate from their parents, and youths who claim to be under age 18, will be allowed to enter the United States via the 2008 loophole for “Unaccompanied Alien Children.”

But Mayorkas offered a much sterner message to the network TV cameras during a staged and very short press conference in Del Rio, Texas, on September 20. For example, he said:

Border Patrol is coordinating with ICE and the U.S. Coast Guard to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing locations … in order to ensure that migrants are swiftly taken into custody, processed and removed from the United States, consistent with our laws and policies [emphasis added].

That statement has a huge loophole —  because Mayorkas believes “our laws and policies” allows all migrants to ask for asylum, and also to take Americans’ jobs while they wait several years for a court date.

Mayorkas carefully wrapped his stern message in vague, passive-voice sentences that minimize his commitments about who would do what, by when. For example, he declared:

The majority of migrants continue to be expelled under CDC’s Title 42 authority. Those who cannot be expelled under that authority, and do not have a legal basis to remain, will be placed in Expedited Removal proceedings.

“What he is describing is not what [journalists and TV viewers] think it is,” responded Krikorian.

“When he says ‘Expedited Removal,’ people are intended to understand that means [people will] be thrown out under Expedited Removal… [but] Expedited Removal is the vehicle they’re using to let people stay,” Krikorian said.

Under federal law, officials can allow migrants to stay if they are put into the Expedited Removal process, because the process allows migrants to stay once they ask for asylum.

In contrast, migrants who are expelled under Title 42 cannot ask for asylum and cannot stay.

“Expedited removal is one more example of a provision in the migration law that has become the opposite of what people think,” said Krikorian. “It has become the conduit for release into the United States.”