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Time Magazine 11th October 2021 Double Issue In The pasT 11 years alone, Haitians have suffered natural disasters, rising gang violence, outbreaks of cholera and COVID-19, and political instability, including the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The crises left many in the hemisphere’s poorest nation feeling they had no option but to leave—despite the difficulties they face in fleeing to other countries. In late September, Americans were confronted with the reality of those difficulties too. An estimated 15,000 people arrived in Del Rio, Texas, that month, below a bridge connecting the city to Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña. A majority were Haitian nationals, migrants, and asylum seekers who ended up living in tents or under tarps, in conditions similar to those in other camps that have formed along the U.S.- Mexico border in recent years. On Sept. 24, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the camp had been cleared, just days after mounted U.S. Border Patrol agents were photographed confronting migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. to make asylum claims. In now-viral photos and video, an agent appears to use his rein and horse to trip a migrant, who falls back into the waters of the Rio Grande. Public anger over the image was immediate. The Biden Administration condemned the Border Patrol agent’s actions, while Mayorkas announced that border agents would stop using horses and that an investigation was underway. But if the images were both shocking and new, immigration historian Brianna Nofil recognized something familiar in them. “They fit in a longer pattern,” Nofil says—a pattern that she says has “enabled the U.S. to build this really dramatic detention and deportation system with the intention of keeping Haitian migrants out. Time Magazine 11th October 2021 Double Issue “They fit in a longer pattern,” Nofil says—a pattern that she says has “enabled the U.S. to build this really dramatic detention and deportation system with the intention of keeping Haitian migrants out. Time Magazine 11th October 2021 Double Issue
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