'Horrific': US Border Patrol agents whipped, rounded up migrants on horseback
The images, which show authorities driving migrants back to the Rio Grande in Texas like cattle, has sparked furore and condemnation for the Biden administration
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Images of US Customs and Border Protection officers on horses, whipping migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico has sparked a new row, with the White House calling the images ‘horrific’. AP
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The photos, which were captured over the weekend, showed US Border Patrol agents on horseback swinging lariats, a rope used by horse riders, while trying to block the passage of Haitian border-crossers. According to reports, some 13,000 mainly Haitian migrants have gathered in a makeshift camp under a bridge connecting Del Rio to Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña on the US-Mexico border. AFP
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Paul Ratje, a photographer, who was at the border, describing the scene said that the Haitians were quite scared. “The agents tried to block them, and then the one agent grabbed a man by his shirt and then kind of swung them around,” said Ratje, who frequently covers border issues. “And I don’t know what prompted that.” AFP
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The US Customs and Border Protection has reassigned officers who were taped corralling migrants on horseback to “administrative duties” pending an investigation, the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Tuesday, amid criticism of the agents. The Biden administration has been grappling with an influx of migrants since the Democrat took office in January. The Haitian migration crisis is exacerbated by those who left Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to settle in South and Central America who are now desperate to leave there due to the coronavirus pandemic and economic collapse. AFP
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The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has called for changes in how the agency works. “Border Patrol must end the use of horse-mounted agents in Del Rio, Texas,” the ACLU chapter said. “The images circulating from the border are vile and unacceptable.” “The situation of Haitian families at the Del Rio bridge is dramatically illustrating what has thus far been largely out of sight, which is that the Biden administration has not in fact distanced itself on asylum policy from the Trump administration,” Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney was quoted as saying by CBS News on the issue. AP
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