Three Immigration and Customs Enforcements received non-life threatening injuries after a group of adult Haitian men deported from the US attacked an adjacent flight carrying families after it landed in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Department of Homeland Security sources speaking to NBC News and Fox News have said.
Amateur footage obtained by US news services shows drama on the tarmac as dozens of people, mostly men, run toward a plane and began throwing shoes and other objects at it while others attempt to board the charter flight, with one crewmember desperately trying to close the door. A local police officer could then be seen stepping onto the ladder truck in front of the angry mob and asking them to disburse as another argues with the crowd.
The incident in the footage is said was one of two disruptions that took place at the Port-au-Prince airport on Tuesday, according to the DHS.
“Some adult migrants caused two separate disruptions on the tarmac after deplaning in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haitian crowd control officers responded to both incidents and resolved the situations. ICE fully respects the rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions, while continuing to perform its immigration enforcement mission consistent with our priorities, federal law and agency policy,” the agency said in a statement.
The Biden administration signed off on deportation flights on Sunday, with over 1,000 Haitian nationals sent back to their home country as of Tuesday. The deportations began after over 15,000 Haitians were discovered congregating under a bridge on the US border with Mexico in Del Rio, Texas.
A Fox News drone discovered the makeshift encampment last week, prompting the Federal Aviation Agency to ban drones from flying over the area. The footage, combined with dramatic images of US border patrol agents on horseback whipping Haitian migrants, proved a major embarrassment for the Biden administration, which is already reeling from Americans’ anger over its response to the crisis at the border.
The socio-economic crisis in Haiti, one of the poorest country in the world, has been exacerbated in recent months by a massive earthquake in August, and the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moise, by a group of US and Colombian mercenaries in July.
Deportations Possible Thanks to Trump-Era Directive
The Biden administration’s move to deport Haitians is being conducted using a Trump-era provision known as Title 42, which allows authorities to deny migrants an opportunity to apply for asylum status and deport them due to coronavirus-related public health restrictions.
The policy has been criticized by members of Biden’s own party, including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who told reporters this week that the expulsions of Haitians “defy common sense.” A federal judge ruled that the deportations must stop immediately, but Biden administration lawyers contested the ruling on Monday. Other civil and refugees rights organizations, including the NAACP, have also blasted the administration for its reversal on human rights grounds.
Haitian migrants collect their belongings after U.S. authorities flew them out of a Texas border city after crossing the Rio Grande river from Mexico, at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti September 21, 2021
© REUTERS / RALPH TEDY EROL
Republicans have also attacked Biden over the border crisis, but from the other direction, asking the president to crack down further to prevent the situation from degenerating further. On Monday, a group of 26 Republican governors penned a letter asking Biden for an urgent meeting, calling for an “open and constructive dialogue regarding border enforcement on behalf of US citizens” and “all those hoping to become US citizens.”
The governors accompanied their appeal with statistics, referencing a 500 percent surge in border apprehensions last month compared to the same period in 2020, with 9,700 of those detained reportedly revealed to have a criminal record. The letter indicated that border agents found and confiscated more fentanyl this year than in the three previous years combined.
On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott revealed that he had sent hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles to create a “steel wall” to physically block migrants from simply “walking into the state of Texas.”
Former President Donald Trump has been relentlessly attacking Biden over the situation at the border since March, warning that the US was at risk of becoming a “Third World Nation” and a “cesspool of humanity” thanks to the influx of migrants, many of whom he said were “totally unchecked and unvetted.”
On Wednesday, unnamed US officials told AP that many of the Haitian nationals encamped under the Del Rio bridge had been quietly been freed in recent days instead of being deported, and instructed to simply give their word to appear at an immigration office within 60 days’ time.
The crisis on the US-Mexico border began to take shape immediately following Biden’s inauguration after he signed about a dozen immigration-related directives cancelling his predecessor’s hardline policies. The president scrapped Trump’s much-touted border wall, promised to “restore and expand” the asylum system, and mentioned the possibility of a “path to citizenship” to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the US. These policies, combined with the poverty, crime and social upheaval plaguing much of Central America and the Caribbean thanks in part to decades of US intervention, has prompted hundreds of thousands of migrants to attempt to make the perilous journey to make it to the United States.
According to Customs and Border Patrol, over 209,000 migrants were apprehended at the US’s southern border in August, bringing the total for the fiscal year up to 1.5 million – on track to matching or surpassing the record 1.7 million apprehensions recorded in the year 2000.