Gov. Abbott sends troops to assist Border Patrol after thousands of migrants arrive in Del Rio
Houston Chronicle by Benjamin Wermund and Elizabeth Trovall 9/16/2021
Thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Haitians, have arrived in Del Rio in recent days, the latest in a surge of migration to the southern border that the Biden administration has struggled to handle, prompting the federal government to boost Border Patrol in the region and Gov. Greg Abbott to send in more state troopers and the Texas National Guard.
Masses of migrants have huddled under an international bridge where Border Patrol set up a temporary holding site to protect them from the sun while officials work to take them into custody and process them, to be either expelled immediately or allowed to seek asylum.
Local officials in that stretch of border, which has historically been quieter, are gobsmacked as Del Rio has become one of the busiest sections for crossings in recent months — even more so in the last few days.
Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens said a crowd of immigrants had been forming under Del Rio’s border crossing from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, and had gradually grown from 2,000 on Saturday to about 8,600 by Thursday.
He said Border Patrol and the Mexican Consulate have told him they had reports that about a month and a half ago a caravan of 25,000 immigrants was headed for Texas through Mexico. He believes the crowd at the bridge is part of that group.
“It’s just unbelievable,” Owens, a Democrat, said of the mass of people under the Del Rio border crossing. “If we are worried about homeland security, you might just throw that out the window. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/abbott-border-patrol-migrants-south-texas-troops-16465098.php
