Images of U.S. Border Patrol agents confronting Haitian migrants in Texas are 'heinous,' says congresswoman
CBC
Newly published images of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing asylum seekers near the U.S.-Mexico border are "heinous," said U.S. Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Approximately 15,000 migrants, many of them Haitian, have crossed the border and gathered at a camp near a freeway bridge in Del Rio, Texas in recent days.
The images of the interactions between the agents and the migrants have shocked many across the U.S.
"We just cannot abide by that kind of abuse of power," Watson Coleman told As It Happens host Carol Off. Watson Coleman is one of more than 50 Democratic lawmakers who wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, asking it to stop deportations of migrants from the Texas border to Haiti.
The Guardian reported that 6,000 migrants had been moved out of the area by Monday, some of them sent on flights back Haiti, which is struggling to deal with the aftermath of an earthquake in August and the assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, in July.
On Monday evening, after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the area and reviewed video of agents' confrontations with migrants, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement on Twitter calling the footage "extremely troubling" and promised an investigation.
"DHS does not tolerate the abuse of migrants in our custody and we take these allegations very seriously," the agency said in the statement.
