US flies newly arrived migrants to Texas only to expel them immediately in El Paso

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Migrants are being transported from southern Texas to El Paso only to be expelled back to Mexico by Customs Border Protection, The Dallas Morning News Learned.

The evictions include children with their families.

Migrants, most of whom are seeking asylum legally, are flown to other cities after crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Federal officials say migrants need to be removed to reduce overcrowding at processing facilities.

El Paso County officials and advocates for immigrants said on Saturday they were told they would receive up to 270 immigrants a day on two separate flights out of the Rio Grande Valley. But instead, many migrants are being sent back across the border to Ciudad Juárez under Title 42, a public health order put into use during the Trump era that allows the government to immediately expel migrants from the border because of the pandemic of the coronavirus.

CBP did not say how many people were expelled from the United States since the flights started last week, but The news found that at least 50 were expelled to Juárez on Thursday alone.

Landon R. Hutchens, a CBP spokesman, blamed the overcrowding in South Texas for the evictions. He emphasized that expulsions from families of immigrants and single adults continue under Title 42 and apply to people who cross without authorization. The Biden government ended the practice of expelling immigrant children who cross the border on their own.

Hutchens said the CBP must transport them across the state to facilities where there is the capacity to process migrants before expelling them.

The movement of migrants across the state and their rapid expulsion emphasize the challenges the Biden government faces in trying to take a more humanitarian approach to immigration and undo Trump’s controversial draconian policies, while insisting that the border is not open .

The move puzzled a Mexican state official and U.S. nonprofit organizations that had prepared shelters in this city for overflowing.

“This changes the game and is very worrying,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director and founder of Casa da Anunciação, an NGO that prepared to receive migrants who arrive twice a day. He said that the number of migrants arriving “is not even close to what we were told it would be”.

Marisa Limon Garza, deputy director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso. he said he met a family of four who said they had just flown out of the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday and were then expelled to Juárez.

“I don’t understand their logic; I can’t frame it and I don’t understand the logic, or how the rules are being applied to some people and not others, ”said Limon Garza. “It makes no sense to me.”

The family was part of a group of 54 Central American migrants that included 15 minors, said a Chihuahua state immigration official, adding that a 5-year-old Honduran girl was transported to a hospital with fever and fatigue.

On Friday, the girl was still hospitalized, said Enrique Valenzuela, coordinator of the State Population Council (COESPO) in northern Chihuahua, which oversees and coordinates aid to migrants waiting to enter the United States

“This is the first time that I know we have received people under Title 42 who were sent here after being picked up at a distant border, people who crossed into Reynosa, McAllen, thousands of miles away and drove out here,” he said. Valenzuela. “This is new and definitely very worrying, especially during a pandemic.”

He said he was not informed by US officials whether it would now be standard practice to pick up migrants in distant border regions, take them to other border cities and then quickly expel them. He said the shelters in Juarez are working at full or near capacity, and said the next few days and weeks were “very difficult, very complicated”.

CBP spokesman Hutchens said that agents saw an increase in the number of migrants they encounter and “to prosecute individuals as safely and quickly as possible, the US Border Patrol in Laredo, Del Rio and El Paso is assisting RGV in processing these matters at their respective industry processing centers. ”

“The border is not open and the CBP is still operating under the guidelines of the Disease Control Center for the pandemic COVID-19,” he said, referring to Title 42.

Hutchens said he could not immediately say how many migrants were transported from southern Texas to El Paso to be expelled to Cuidad Juárez.

CBP arrested and found more than 100,000 migrants on the US-Mexico border during the four weeks ending March 3, according to data released on Wednesday.

Hutchens added: “It takes time to sue people. We don’t know who these people are. They may be terrorists, trying to enter the country. They may be members of a drug cartel with gang affiliations with multiple pending warrants. We just don’t know and we need to know who is coming to our country illegally. “

Immigration

Coronavirus leads the feds to transfer hundreds of migrant families to El Paso and Laredo from crowded facilities in Valley

EL PASO – Hundreds of migrant families are being transported from southern Texas to this region by the Department of Homeland Security to help ease pandemic-related overcrowding in facilities in the Rio Grande Valley as the flow of people across the border increases . County officials and immigrant advocates in El Paso said on Monday that up to two daily flights, each carrying up to 135 migrants, are expected to land here when the Biden government starts playing a kind of musical chairs to shelter and properly care for immigrants and asylum seekers.

The Biden government has acknowledged the difficulties it faces as migration increases and Trump’s policies are slowly undone.

“It is difficult at times to convey hope for the future and the danger that it is now,” said Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator of the southern border, during a press conference at the White House last week. “And that is what we are trying to do. And I – I will certainly agree that we are trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. “

Limon Garza and Garcia said that this latest practice from the Biden government shows that the new government “was not ready”, nor did it have the proper infrastructure for challenges along the border that members of the border Congress, including many Republicans and Democratic representatives. Henry Cuellar de Laredo, is calling it “crisis”.

“I think the Biden administration had a challenging time to inherit agencies and systems that were deeply broken by the last administration, and even administrations before that and now, it’s a confluence of events that make it incredibly difficult to turn the tide and correct some of those mistakes and they are having to do this in real time, ”said Limon Garza. “Hopefully, this serves as a worrying warning.”

News of the evictions comes as a Republican delegation led by minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, prepares to visit El Paso on Monday to focus on immigration issues that Republicans are already signaling will be in. center of his efforts to resume Congress in 2022. They seem likely taken from the manual used by former President Donald J. Trump, who repeatedly ignited the forces of anti-immigrant sentiment during his 2016 campaign and four years in office.

Trump, in a scorching statement last week, warned of a “border spiraling tsunami” and predicted that “illegal immigrants from all corners of the earth will descend on our border and will never be returned”.

US Deputy Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, called the delegation’s scheduled trip to El Paso the most recent “political opportunity for Republicans to incite their base, push xenophobia, attack the border, attack Biden and attack immigrants.”

Local authorities on the United States’ border with Mexico are on high alert, anxious to avert a humanitarian crisis and concerned about the tensions and hate crimes such as what they witnessed on August 3, 2019, when a man from northern Texas drove to El Paso to kill Mexicans for “Stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Twenty-three people died and dozens were injured. On Saturday afternoon, on hearing news that families were being expelled to Juárez, the bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, went to the border wall and prayed.

“This worries us, because people are feeding these racist and xenophobic fears and putting them on migrants and asylum seekers and we know that El Paso knows how it can be,” said Limon Garza. “We know the 3rd of August. We know January 6, ”she said, referring to the date when Trump’s radical supporters invaded the United States Capitol. “This has not been forgotten by anyone.”