Harrowing Images of US Border Patrol Using Whips on Haitian Migrants (+Video)


Harrowing Images of US Border Patrol Using Whips on Haitian Migrants (+Video)

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A video circulating online shows the US Border Patrol horses coming close to trampling children as agents harass Haitian migrants and use whip-like lengths of cord to enforce their orders.

The disturbing video shows horses coming close to trampling children and the agents harassing the migrants, who are soon to be returned to Haiti on flights out of Del Rio in the Lone State State.

 

Thousands of Haitians have been sheltering under the Del Rio International Bridge, which crosses the Rio Grande from Mexico to the US.

But one set of images from the undeniable humanitarian crisis that has not been flashed across screens enough is that of the rabid Border Patrol agents on horseback tracking down Haitians in graphic photos that evoke haunting images of slave patrols.

Of course, there is no direct correlation between Haitian migrants and American slavery. However, it’s far from a coincidence that border patrol and slave patrols — both featuring white men on horseback ordering Black people around on a foreign land– share the common bond of American law enforcement, a system that has traditionally and consistently undervalued Black lives for centuries in a trend that has shown no signs of slowing.

There’s also the issue that Border Patrol was accosting Haitian in Texas, a state with its own sordid history of slavery.

The photos from Texas show angry-looking Border Patrol agents, complete with whips in their hands, literally lashing out at Haitian migrants who were wading across the Rio Grande River to shore in Texas, where thousands of others had been assembling under Del Rio International Bridge in a makeshift camp.

Photo captions provided by Getty Images claimed the Border Patrol agents were rounding up the Haitian migrants in advance of the US government’s planned mass expulsion to return them to Haiti, a nation that is in the throes of multiple crises following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and last month’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed more than 2,100 people, injured more than 10,000 people and left tens of thousands of people without homes.

As previously reported, President Joe Biden‘s administration is ramping up the deportation of Haitians to their home country. Associated Press is reporting up to eight flights a day will depart to send migrants back to the Caribbean nation.

Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley recently said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, “That ICE (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) would continue to carry out the mass deportations of our Haitian neighbors — with Haiti in the midst of its worst political, public health and economic crises yet — is cruel and callous.”

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