Homeland Security Investigating After Images of Haitian Migrants at Border

Politics|Homeland Security investigates borderline patrol’s attraction of Haitian immigrants.

• Sept. 20, 2021, 10:29 p.m. ET

Images and video of U.S. Border Patrol agents connected horseback grabbing and chasing down Haitian migrants astatine the U.S.-Mexico borderline person prompted the Department of Homeland Security to motorboat an probe into the matter, the bureau said connected Twitter.

On Monday, D.H.S. said successful a tweet that it has reviewed footage emerging from the borderline and takes the allegations of maltreatment against migrants “very seriously.”

“The footage is highly troubling, and the facts learned from the afloat investigation, which volition beryllium conducted swiftly, volition specify the due disciplinary actions to beryllium taken,” D.H.S. said.

The Office of Professional Responsibility volition pb the probe, and it volition besides deploy unit to the border, wherever thousands of Haitians person poured into the municipality of Del Rio, Texas, successful caller days, living successful a impermanent camp and hoping to question asylum successful the United States.

The announcement of the probe follows the work of scenes from on the Rio Grande depicting what appears to beryllium Border Patrol officials mounted connected horseback chasing, grabbing and intimidating migrants, utilizing their horses to physically artifact them from crossing further into the United States. In 1 video recorded by Al Jazeera English, an cause tin beryllium heard utilizing an expletive arsenic helium uses his equine to artifact and steer migrants backmost toward the river.

Jen Psaki, White House property secretary, called the footage “horrific.”

Speaking from Del Rio, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the caput of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, issued a informing to Haitians trying to participate the United States, saying that extortion has been extended for those who arrived earlier July 29. That extortion does not widen to caller arrivals.

“We are precise acrophobic that Haitians who are taking this irregular migration way are receiving mendacious accusation that the borderline is unfastened oregon that impermanent protected presumption is available,” helium said during a quality conference. “I privation to marque definite that it is known that this is not the mode to travel to the United States.”