WASHINGTON, 20 September 2021, (TON): Rights groups in the United States have blasted the Biden administration for its planned expulsion of some 12,000 mostly Haitian migrants and asylum seekers who have been camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, after wading across the Rio Grande River from Mexico.

US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that 6,500 migrants and asylum seekers have been taken into custody in advance of processing and removal from the US. On Sunday, the first flights carrying migrants landed in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.

“It’s completely unconscionable,” Steven Forester, immigration policy coordinator at the US-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told media. “There’s no way Haiti can handle the people that are in Haiti now given the conditions there. It can’t provide for these people.”

The US in May acknowledged the potential dangers Haitian migrants could face if they are deported back to their country [Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters]

Images during the weekend showed hundreds of Haitian migrants trudging waist-deep across the Rio Grande while carrying their belongings over their heads to reach the US, heaping pressure on the Biden administration to rethink its immigration policies.

DHS said the vast majority of the migrants will be expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era health order that cites the coronavirus pandemic as a reason to quickly expel people seeking asylum at the US border.