Thousands of Haitian migrants bet their savings and lives on the expectation of a welcome by President Joe’s Biden’s border agency.
That tested, trusted, and reasonable bet worked for thousands of networked, cellphone-using Haitians — until Biden suddenly changed the rules in September after thousands of predominantly Haitian migrants crossed into Del Rio, Texas, en masse and assembled at a makeshift camp, placing the administration in political peril.
Migrants, mostly from Haiti, gather at a makeshift encampment under the International Bridge on the border between Del Rio, TX, and Acuña, MX, on September 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. The makeshift encampment has grown rapidly and officials are struggling to provide food, water, shelter, and sanitation, forcing between 8,000 and 12,000 migrants to walk across the Rio Grande several times each day for basic necessities. (Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images)
Now, thousands of Haitians are back in Haiti, penniless, jobless, and often in debt after making the trek to the United States from their settled migrant homes and jobs. Rumors that President Biden was allowing all families into the U.S. reportedly drove many Haitians to leave their native and adopted homes, the World reported last week, adding:
In Haiti, many [of the] people [deported from the U.S.] are having to start all over again, without anything back at home, while others are still trying to figure out how to reach the US. This includes people like Dessecia and Dianie, who said they were 15 when they left Haiti, and now, at age 19, are among those who were recently deported back. They asked that their full names not be used because they plan on trying to enter the US again.
President Joe Biden responds to a question about the U.S. border as he speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Although Biden rescinded most of his predecessor’s strict immigration measures that managed to bring U.S.-bound migration down to record lows, the president kept the pandemic control protocol known as Title 42, which allows border officials to deport any migrant, including asylum seekers immediately. Biden officials, however, weakened Title 42, allowing exceptions to several alien categories, including some families, a move that may be the foundation of the rumors that drove some Haitians towards the U.S.
Some Republicans blame Bidens’ version of Title 42 for incentivizing Haitians and other global migrants to leave their homes for the United States.
The administration’s latest apprehension data — long used as a rough measure of migration flows to the U.S. despite excluding successful illegal entries — expose Biden’s sudden policy turnaround that blocked expectant and hopeful Haitians at the U.S. border, and then sent them back into the dire poverty of their homeland.
Using pseudonyms because they intend to get into the U.S. again, some Haitian deportees spoke to the World news outlet soon after getting off the Biden deportation plane at Haiti’s capital airport.
“They can’t do this,” Dianie declared in Spanish after learning the language in Chile, where she lived before heading to the United States. “We left Haiti years ago, and now we’re back?”
Before the pandemic economic downturn, Haitian migrants could enter Chile with ease and get by. Now, the policies have changed.
Referring to the late Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in July, she added, “There’s no president, so how can I be sent back to a country where they can murder the president?”
Many Haitian migrants caught in Del Rio trekked thousands of miles with family members in tow, including children, risking their lives to get to the U.S.
“There was hardly any air,” Esthere Thomas told the World, describing her three-hour ordeal getting smuggled from Honduras into Guatemala along with her 11-year-old daughter in a truck trailer for $250.
“We nearly died,” she proclaimed, stressing that fleeing the chaos in Haiti is worth risking everything all over again.
Haitian migrants are pictured on the banks of the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on September 19, 2021. (Photo by PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden immigration officials reportedly deported Thomas and her daughter a month ago.
Republicans and some Latin American governments blame the migrant surge fueling the U.S. southern border crisis on Biden overturning most of his predecessors’ strict measures that brought migration levels to record lows.
Critics also believe Biden’s promise to have a so-called “orderly, secure, and well-managed border while treating people fairly and humanely” also lured migrants from Haiti to the United States.
Meanwhile, Democrats and their corporate media allies assert that migrants from Haiti and other countries desperate for a shot at a better life in America have misinterpreted Biden’s vows to have a “more humane” immigration system than his predecessor as an invitation to come to the U.S.
As part of their recruitment efforts, human traffickers are exacerbating the migrants’ perceptions, the Democrats, and their allies assert.
Title 42 allowed the Biden administration to deport thousands of Haitians who gathered in Del Rio while allowing others into the U.S. interior.
The Biden administration believes removing the Haitian migrants serves as a deterrent for future caravans. Opponents of the move believe that deterrence does not work, noting that some of the removed Haitians are already making plans to try to enter the U.S. once again.
Haitians put everything on the line — money and the potential to lose their life or get hurt— to flee their poverty, corruption, crime, and natural disaster-stricken country in search of a better life. The journey forced many of them, along with other global migrants, to cross the lawless and dense Darien Gap jungle that straddles the Panama-Colombia border, where many U.S.-bound migrants are robbed, maimed, raped, and killed.