Submitted by Joint Center
Response to Haitian migrants’ crisis: Outrage spread after footage of Border Patrol agents on horses chasing and whipping Haitian migrants crossing the Mexican border into Texas was made public. In response to the footage, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “what I saw depicted, those individuals on horseback treating human beings the way they were was horrible,” and that she “fully support[s]” a “thorough investigation into what is going on there.” (The Department of Homeland Security has since launched a full investigation). Prior to Vice President Harris’s statement, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the footage “horrific” and that the border patrol “should never be able to do it again.” She also noted that the United States government has “been working to provide a range of assistance, working closely with officials from the government as individuals are going back to Haiti, to provide a range of financial assistance, to provide a range of technical assistance.” AP reports that the “Biden administration plans the widescale expulsion of Haitian migrants from a small Texas border city by putting them on flights to Haiti starting Sunday.”
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty (D-OH) said that her “heart aches for the people of Haiti,” and that she “will continue to fight to see that refugees are welcome in America, regardless of race or country of origin.” She stated that she contacted Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to “request that he immediately travel to the border to assess the situation and ensure that humanitarian assistance, including lavatory facilities, food, and water, is being provided to those being processed, especially children” and requested that a comprehensive briefing be provided to the Congressional Black Caucus on “the status of Haitian migrants and on whether alternatives exist for their relocation.” See additional statements from the NAACP and National Action Network.
The increase of Haitian migrants to the United States comes after a series of tumultuous events in Haiti including the assassination of the country’s president in early July followed by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake last month leaving over 12,000 injured, over 2,000 dead, and nearly 53,000 homes destroyed. On Thursday, Daniel Foote—the Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti—resigned noting that he “will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life.” He also stated that the United States’s “policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and [his] policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”
Facing extreme heat: President Biden announced that he’s “mobilizing an all-of-government effort to protect workers, children, seniors, and at-risk communities from extreme heat” after twelve people died in Louisiana following Hurricane Ida, and states in the Northwest saw record-breaking heatwaves over the summer. A University of California, San Diego study found that “low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly White neighborhoods.”
