U.S. deport 1, 400 migrants from Texas to Haiti

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U.S. deport 1, 400 migrants from Texas to Haiti

A couple bathes a child in a makeshift border camp along the International Bridge in Delaware, Texas, September 22.2021. CIUDAD ACUNA, Sept 23 Reuters - A migrant camp in Texas near the Mexican border where as many as 14,000 Haitians became concerned in recent days at an expulsion flight and detentions, even as some remain committed to trying to stay in the United States, will shrink to less than half this size.

The DHS has returned 1,401 migrants from the camp in Del Rio, Texas, to Haiti and immediately taken 3,206 into custody, the Department of Homeland Security said late on Wednesday.

Wade McMullen, an attorney with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, said several hundred people, mostly pregnant women and parents with children, had been released in Del Rio, Texas over the past several days.

Those people, and others in detention who have not been expelled will have immigration court dates.

The Rio Grande Area, which includes the camp where families have crammed into makeshift shelters made of reeds on the banks of Del Rio, now holds fewer than 5,000 people, DHS said.

The deportations came amid profound instability in the Caribbean nation, the poorest in Western Hemisphere, where a major assassination, gang violence and a presidential earthquake have spread chaos in recent weeks.

Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N refugee agency, warned that the U.S. expulsion from Haiti might violate international law.

On the other side of the river, several hundred more Haitians are living in an extracamp on the way to Ciudad Acuna, dotted with blankets, pieces of cardboard and a handful of tarps and tents.

The International Committee of the Red Cross called for protection for Haitians gathering in Mexico, noting their special condition of vulnerability in a statement on Wednesday.

As the U.S. authorities escalated expulsion flights, some Haitian families have decided to stay in Mexico and seek legal status there rather than risk getting return to Haiti. Enex and Wendy were among those who planned to stay in Mexico with their 2 year old daughter after hearing about the expulsions.

But a cousin told them on WhatsApp on Wednesday morning that he had succeeded in finding his wife in the United States and had a court date to ask asylum in October.

Enex and Wendy, who asked not to disclose their last name, spent hours on Wednesday paralyzed by uncertainty before finally gathering up their few belongings and forging the river to the U.S. side to try their luck, the latest turning point in their odyssey from Chile that included a seven-day stretch through Darien jungle.

Thousands more Haitians, some of whom had been waiting for months for responses on their asylum applications in southern Mexico, traveled north to Mexico City, Veracruz, and Monterrey this week.

Guatemala's refugee agency, COMAR, said that because of high demand there are no appointments available in its office at Tapachula, near the border with Mexico, until next year and that many pending appointments had been rescheduled.

Juliana Exime, a Haitian migrant, decided to wait out the process in Tapachula and stay despite the delays.

I was going to go with a big group heading north, but I'm very scared they are going to deport me, Exime said. The only thing I want is that they let me work in Mexico, I want to do things legally.