texas

DHS Reviewing Agency Failures That Led to Surprise Surge of Haitian Migrants at Texas Border

The officials said the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the failures internally

NBC Universal, Inc. Migrating away from crises like an earthquake, many Haitian people made their way to South American countries like Brazil and Chile – but moved north as work dried up and misinformation about the U.S. border spread.

The U.S. knew in July that thousands of Haitians were heading to the U.S. border, but a failure to share intelligence and an internal debate over whether to increase deportations left immigration officials ill-equipped to handle the 28,000 who converged on a Texas bridge last month, three U.S. officials said.

The officials said the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the failures internally and has made them part of its discussions to be better prepared for any future surge.

Two of the officials said that the debate over starting deportations before the migrant surge in Del Rio, Texas, was a political battle between progressives and others at DHS and that the progressives won, delaying deportation flights.

Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis all had information as far back as July that indicated that large groups of Haitians were making their way north from South and Central America to the U.S. border, the three officials said. But the intelligence was not shared widely enough within DHS and across agencies to indicate the size or speed of the group of migrants or that they would all arrive in one location.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here. 

Scenes of thousands of Haitian migrants gathering at the border town of Del Rio, Texas, and images of some being chased down by border control agents on horseback shocked many Americans. But not those who understand how the history of Haiti and U.S. immigration policy led to this moment. NBCLX storyteller Eric Rodriguez digs into the story behind the story.
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