As the migrant encampment in Del Rio continues to shrink–due to a variety of factors including some migrants returning to Mexico, some being deported to Haiti, but most being released into the United States–we learn that another 19,000 are waiting in the Colombian town of Necocli for their own chance to continue the same journey north.
Fox News correspondent Yami Virgin, reporting for Fox News affiliate KABB in San Antonio, confirms the number after talking with the Colombian Public Defender’s Office.
“I love Chile, it’s 1,000 times better than Haiti. But I want to come to the United States, that’s a million times better.” — Haitian migrant
The process detailed by Virgin, which deals with the migrants’ exodus from Colombia, is but a part of a multinational system managed by cartels and governments alike, including–perhaps surprisingly–officials of the United States. For the complete story, see today’s issue of the London Daily Mail, which provides the map below.
The Daily Mail talked with Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, who explained that while the migrants at Del Rio were mostly Haitian, they were not most recently from Haiti. They, as well as the 19K now in Colombia, had come primarily from Chile and Brazil, two comparatively wealthy nations where many of them had held jobs. Bensman told the newspaper of his interviews with migrants:
When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we’re coming now. That was the decision point. I’ve interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it’s always the same story – Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle.
The migrants then began their journey up through South America from Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paolo, Brazil, to Colombia, the northernmost country on the continent. As Virgin describes it, migrants then typically gather there in Necocli, Colombia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Urabá, and prepare for their trek through the notorious Darien Gap into Panama. To reach the jumping-off point for the Gap–the town of Acandi, Colombia–they take a ferry, which leaves once a day and carries 250 passengers on each trip. At Acandi, they begin a dangerous, week-long trip to Panama through the 66-mile-long Gap.
Once in Panama, the migrants turn themselves into the Panamanian Border Patrol, which houses them in transit camps. It is at this point in the pipeline where governments–including that of the U.S.–take an active role in this illegal enterprise. According to Virgin:
U.S. federal agents and civil service employees [at the camps] help to do biometrics on the migrants. They also run them through National Crime Information Center, Interpol, and a terror watch list to see if they are wanted for crimes anywhere, so they can continue their trip north.
Those cleared for travel are then herded onto one of about 15 government buses that make daily runs to the Costa Rican border. The migrants make their way, often on buses provided by each local government, up through Central America to the town of Tapachula, in southern Mexico.
At this point, the recent Del Rio migrants reached an impasse. Todd Bensman says the Biden administration had pressured Mexican authorities for several months not to let the migrants go farther north. Then, suddenly, on September 12, the Mexican government let them go. Why they did so is an open question, but many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass in preparation for El Grito, the September 16 holiday celebrating Mexican independence. Bensman says, “I think they just said we’re going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.”
Once released, the migrants continued north and again lucked out when the Los Zetos cartel allowed them to cross the border at Del Rio/Acuna for free, instead of charging fees of up to $10,000 per head common elsewhere.
From Ciudad Acuna, it was just a short, unmolested walk across ankle-deep water to the Promised Land of America, where those with the foresight to bring along a child or two are in like Flynn.
For more see Fox29 and The Daily Mail.