On Wednesday September 22 at a press conference, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said about the images and videos of border patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics to push Haitian refugees back to the US-Mexico border near Del Rio, in Texas "[...] What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery [...] Haitians, into the water where they're scrambling and falling down when all they're trying to do is escape from violence in their country [...] I'm pissed. I'm unhappy and I'm not just unhappy with the cowboys [...] I'm unhappy with the administration."

Waters has criticized the Biden administration, suggesting it is taking a similar approach to immigration to that of the Trump administration.

"We are following the Trump policy. He is the one that does not follow the Constitution and would not allow those seeking refuge to be able to petition to get into the country [...] What the hell are we doing here ?

[...] I want to know, in the first place, who's paying these cowboys to do this work ? [...] They've got to be gotten rid of. They've got to be stopped. It cannot go on."

"We are here and we are organized and we are saying to the president and everybody else, 'You got to stop this madness,'" Waters told Congress joined by other House Democrats from the "Congressional Black Caucus", from the "Caribbean Caucus", "Haitian Caucus" and "Hispanic Caucus" to condemn the treatment of Haitian migrants by the border patrol.

"As we speak out against the cruel, the inhumane and the flat-out racist treatment of our Haitian brothers and sisters at the southern border [...] We cannot and must not look away in this moment," said Massachusetts Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley, adding "Haitian lives are Black lives and if we truly believe that Black lives matter, then we must reverse course. The Biden administration must immediately and indefinitely halt all deportations of Haitian migrants [...] It must affirm and guarantee the right to due process for those seeking asylum and it must use every resource available to support those fleeing this humanitarian crisis on the island."

Note that more than 50 Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to stop deportations to Haiti due to instability, insecurity and the socio-political crisis in Haiti. While the slowness of processing asylum applications and the rejection of most of them cause growing frustration among migrants.

S/ HaitiLibre