Millions across the globe have seen the infuriating and terrifying scenes from Del Rio, Texas: a mounted U.S. Border Patrol agent—a pig on a horse—using his reins like a whip against a Black man… another cop screaming abuse and insults at a group of men he’s trying to drive back into the river that divides the U.S. and Mexico, shouting, “This is why your country’s shit! Because you use your women for this!” as he nearly tramples two terrified children with his horse… thousands of people packed into the squalor, heat and filth of a heavily guarded encampment under a bridge, overseen by U.S. enforcers.

The videos and photos from Del Rio provided but a glimpse of the pain and repression inflicted by this country against Haitian asylum seekers over the past week. They evoked gruesome images from U.S. history, of mounted white slave catchers hunting down Black people; of people crammed into slave ships.

Horrific Crimes Against Humanity

As we reported last week, thousands of desperate migrants, mainly Haitians seeking asylum in the U.S., were trapped in squalor in a makeshift camp under a bridge that connects Del Rio with Ciudad Acuña, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. On the afternoon of September 24, the last of these migrants were bussed out of the degradation in which U.S. authorities had kept them. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Alejandro Mayorkas claimed that the U.S. had completed the “expulsion” of 2,000 Haitians from the U.S.; another 5,000 remain in DHS custody while they are being “processed”; and 8,000 “have decided to return to Mexico voluntarily."

This entire situation erupted rapidly and developed quickly—much about it was, and remains, unknown. Revcom.us will continue to monitor and report on further developments. But one thing is abundantly clear—enormous suffering and great crimes against humanity were, and continue to be, inflicted on thousands of people by the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, and by the architects and enforcers of U.S. immigration policy.

U.S. Defies Its Own, and International, Law

Asylum is a right for persecuted people, a right recognized by U.S. and international law. But the Biden administration, picking up where the Trump/Pence fascists left off, has announced they are carrying out “expedited removal” of migrants. And they have used “Title 42” of the U.S. public health code to deny asylum hearings to thousands of people, under the pretext of protecting the U.S. against the spread of COVID-19. Title 42 enables the government to “expel” unwanted asylum seekers from the U.S. for reasons of “public health,” without even a pretense of legality—which they have done massively and systematically.

This is not a temporary policy. DHS head Mayorkas said that the U.S. intends to “continue to exercise our Title 42 authority in light of the public-health imperative as determined by the Centers for Disease Control.” In other words, the U.S. will continue to shut down the border and expel massive amounts of asylum seekers, using the lying pretext of protecting Americans from the pandemic.

Many of the people at the Del Rio camp who were not immediately expelled from the U.S. were sent to various cities across Texas and the rest of the U.S. and placed in shelters. According to AP News, “Criteria for deciding who is flown to Haiti and who is released in the U.S. are a mystery...” CNN reported, “Some of the migrants, it seems, have been released back into the U.S. under a longtime monitoring program (similar to that in use during both the Obama and Trump administrations), though their precise circumstances are unclear.” CNN also said that a DHS official told them that most people now being “processed” by immigration authorities are “likely to be expelled.” A lawyer with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights described the situation as a “black box” and said, “Right now, we have no official access to understand what processes are underway, what protections are being provided for the migrants.”

Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University, said that many of the Haitians who were forced to return to Mexico had been living in countries like Chile, Brazil, and Ecuador and that “more than likely, none of these countries is willing to accept Haitian migrants because of their status."

What all this adds up to: most of the people at the Del Rio camp who were not immediately expelled will likely have their asylum applications rejected by the U.S. and will be sent back to Haiti. Those who returned to Mexico will probably be deported from that country. They had fled the suffering and poverty in their home country—a hell created under U.S. domination, made even worse in recent years by two massive and deadly earthquakes over the past decade, hurricanes made more destructive by global warming, intense political crises that include a presidential assassination this July, and rampant violence by various police agencies and criminal gangs.

A Fascist “Steel Wall”

At the same time as federal authorities were stepping up expulsions and rapidly emptying the Del Rio encampment, Texas authorities, led by fascist governor Greg Abbot, mobilized what he called a “steel wall”—miles of police cars lined up on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande—to prevent Haitians and others from crossing the river. Since the Border Patrol shut down the official border ports of entry at Del Rio, many people had waded back and forth into Mexico to get basic supplies such as water, food, and diapers.

Abbott said Texas police would continue to arrest these immigrants on charges of criminal trespass. Fascists like Abbott have no right to talk about Haitian people, or people from anywhere else, “trespassing” on U.S. soil! Think about it—impoverished immigrants, carrying everything they own on their backs, are accused of being “criminals” and thrown in prison for setting foot in Texas—while for over 100 years the U.S., using its murderous armed forces, has violently and repeatedly “trespassed” all over Haiti,¹ Mexico, Caribbean countries, and all of Central and South America since it invaded Mexico in 1846! This doesn’t even include all the other places around the world that the U.S. has invaded, occupied, destroyed, bullied, and dominated.²

A Gaping Hole in the System’s Camouflage

On September 21, Joe Biden spoke at the United Nations. The Houston Chronicle reported that “Biden spent his Tuesday address at the U.N. General Assembly in New York calling for the global community to come together to defend human rights and combat injustice worldwide, declaring, 'the future will belong to those who embrace human dignity, not trample it.”' The lying hypocrisy Biden spewed at the U.N. came at the same time images of U.S. authorities tormenting Haitian immigrants—“trampling on their human dignity”—reached a global audience.

The situation in Del Rio has widened and enflamed deep divisions and bitter fighting among the rulers of the U.S., and inflicted heightened suffering upon thousands of migrants. Republican fascists—who for years have advocated and implemented even more blatant and brutal atrocities on immigrants than the Democrats—seized on the crisis at Del Rio to step up their attacks on Biden. Greg Abbott said Biden had created a “man-made disaster of inhumanity of epic proportions” and vowed that Texas will continue to “step up” border repression.

As A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION from the Revcoms says:

These divisions and conflicts have ripped big holes in the camouflage of this system, further exposing its real nature and the lie that this is “the greatest country in the world,” the “shining light of freedom” and “leader of the free world.” All this is very likely to become more and more intense, tearing apart the bonds that have held things together under this system and further deepening the divisions throughout society, including within the institutions of power. This could lead to something very bad—or something very good, IF we act in the way we need to in these rare circumstances and fight to take things where they need to go.