DHS: Stop asking how many Haitians we released into the U.S.

AP Photo/Fernando Llano

Yesterday we learned that at least part of the mystery of the “disappearing Haitians” had been solved. Despite multiple assurances from the White House and DHS that the roughly 15,000 Haitian illegal migrants under the overpass in Del Rio, Texas would be flown back to their home countries, thousands of them were actually processed under the same catch and release program that the Biden administration has been running since taking office and they were set loose into the American interior. But at least for some of us, the math still didn’t seem to be adding up. How many were released and told to contact an ICE office at some point in the future? Despite multiple requests from reporters, Homeland Security isn’t giving out a figure. The Most Transparent Administration Ever isn’t doing much to tone down people’s suspicions that something strange is going on with this flood of Haitian migrants. (NY Post)

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The Department of Homeland Security revealed late Wednesday that more than 4,600 migrants who gathered under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas in recent days have been removed from the makeshift encampment — but did not specify how many have been released into the US.

The department said that fewer than 5,000 migrants remained at the Del Rio site, which by some estimates held nearly 15,000 people before the Biden administration ordered removals to begin this past Sunday…

It is not clear how officials determine which migrants are deported and which are released into the US. However, Wade McMullen, an attorney with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, told the wire agency that most migrants he and other advocates have interviewed and who have been turned loose have been families with young children and pregnant women.

So is this a situation where DHS doesn’t even know how many were processed and released or they do know but they don’t want to say? This is a question I’ve been harping on since the massive encampment at Del Rio first appeared. The math simply doesn’t work out.

The crowd topped out at an estimated 15,000 people early this week. Sure, that figure could be off in either direction by as much as a thousand, but the aerial videos from Fox News made it possible to get a fairly accurate count. (At least when the government wasn’t trying to ban drone flights over the encampment to prevent the media from photographing the area.) But let’s be generous and say that it was only 14,000 migrants.

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DHS said yesterday that “more than 4,600 migrants” had been “removed” from the encampment. That’s an oddly specific number. If you don’t have an exact figure, why not round it off to the nearest thousand? But assuming it’s accurate, that would still leave us with 9,400 migrants in the encampment. And yet DHS went on to say that “fewer than 5,000 migrants remained at the Del Rio site.” That leaves more than 4,000 unaccounted for. Where did they go? We can assume that some of them returned over the river to take their chances with an asylum claim in Mexico, but would that many do it when their goal was to make it to America?

DHS was also unable to provide a firm figure as to how many of the 4,600 “removed” migrants were shipped out and how many were released. But their spokesperson went on to say that 1,401 migrants have been deported to Haiti. That’s a very exact figure. So if we flew 1,401 of them to Haiti, why not simply say that the other 3,299 were processed and released? Could it be because that would be a very bad headline to show up in the press, particularly when the Haitians have now attempted to hijack multiple buses transporting them for processing?

I realize that this is the fifth day in a row that I’ve brought this up, but there’s something going on in Del Rio that we’re not being told about. Both DHS and the White House Press Secretary have been caught telling bare-faced lies to the media about the Haitian migrant situation, specifically saying that everyone was being deported. Now the numbers they are reporting seem to be either wildly inaccurate or they are deliberately obfuscating them. We need some more whistleblowers inside of the CBP and/or DHS to drop a dime to the press. Something isn’t right here and we deserve to know what’s actually going on.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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