Donald Trump's orders have migrants who once braved jungles in the Darien Gap trying to return to the countries they once fled.
President Donald Trump has been in office for just over a month and his mark on federal government is already everywhere. But one of the biggest impacts so far has been his crackdown on the border, specifically in Texas .
In January, U.S. Immigration and Customs reported just 16,553 encounters with people crossing along all five border patrol sectors within Texas. That amounts to a 63% drop from just a year ago and a nearly 80% drop from two years ago. In the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, the number was down to just 3,500 encounters for January. Compare that to just over a year ago, when 71,000 encounters were reported. Eagle Pass became the center of the national debate over border security over the last two years as the number of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti skyrocketed during Biden’s administration. It was in Eagle Pass, that Gov. Greg Abbott first began deploying razor wire and a floating bouy barrier in the Rio Grande to block people from crossing, and Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, all flocked to the region to call attention to it all. To be sure, the border crossing numbers had been on steady decline for the last six months as former President Joe Biden implemented programs to slow border crossing and got Mexican officials to step up their efforts to slow crossings. The downward trend has only aided Trump as he looks to make border security his signature issue. In starting his second term, he has promised to get border wall construction restarted, ended the online asylum appointment app created by Biden, pressured Mexico to stop migrants from getting to the border and is now reportedly looking to re-instate a COVID-19 era policy that would allow U.S. immigration officials to swiftly expel people on the grounds of preventing the spread of disease. Taken altogether, it now has asylum seekers who braved trekking through the jungles of the Darien Gap on the Colombia-Panama border, trying to go back to the countries they once left. The Associated Press reported on the “reverse flow” of migrants who are now boarding small speed boats to get back to South America. Karla Castillo, a 36-year-old Venezuelan making the return journey with her younger sister, said with Trump’s actions “all our hopes went up in smoke.” And that is before the mass deportation program that is aiming to round up people who already had crossed the border. On Monday, federal immigration officials descended on Colony Ridge, a sprawling development northeast of Harris County that has long been the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories, for what appeared to be the first major Houston-area deportation crackdown under Trump. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, told the Houston Chronicle in an interview that he was present for the operation, which was ongoing as of Monday afternoon.
U.S. Immigration Haiti Republican Houston Chronicle Associated Press Joe Biden Greg Abbott Karla Castillo Tom Homan Eagle Pass Texas Del Rio Venezuela U.S. Mexican Cuba Rio Grande Mexico South America Houston Harris County Colony Ridge Colombia Panama Darien Gap Donald Trump COVID
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