WH Reportedly Plans to Launch 'Deportation Flights' to Haiti as Texas Migrant Crisis Worsens

Earlier, it was reported that some 10,000 migrants have flocked to Del Rio, Texas, assembling in a makeshift camp set up under a bridge. Most of them are reportedly from Haiti.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to boost deportation flights in order to tackle the growing crowds of migrants on the US border in Texas, according to NBC News, citing internal documents.

The said documents envisage eight deportation flights to be flown to Haiti next week, and then increase the number to 10 per week. Over the past few days, according to the report, only a few deportation flights were carried out amid the surge of Haitian migrants on the border.

These flights were stopped by the Biden administration in the wake of a devastating 7.2-magnitude earthquake that ravaged Haiti, with the move immediately blasted by critics, among them Senator Ted Cruz, who said it would draw more people to Texas.

“If you’re from Haiti, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have said we have open borders, come to Del Rio and they will let you in”, Cruz told Fox News earlier in the week.

Now that the deportation flights are expected to be resumed, ICE also plans to launch what it has dubbed "lateral flights", which will carry Haitian migrants to different parts of the United States in order to reduce crowds in Texas' Del Rio. The area has recently seen a new wave of migrants from Haiti, with reports estimating the number to be as high as 10,000.

These people arrived in Del Rio and gathered in an overcrowded camp under a bridge, facing harsh conditions and prompting concerns of rising COVID cases, especially in light of the highly contagious Delta variant and the Biden administration's lack of demands for the mandatory vaccination of migrants.

Adding fuel to the fire that erupted around yet another wave of migrants on the US border, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibited drones from flying over the area of Del Rio after footage capturing the crowds emerged.

While the authorities claim the decision was motivated by "security concerns" and asserted that the drones were “interfering with law enforcement operations”, critics immediately blasted the Biden administration for "censorship" and attempting to draw attention away from the growing migrant crowds.