Estimates of the number of largely Haitian migrants now camping out under the Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas were all more than 12,000 by midday Saturday, Sept. 18, with the sheriff of Val Verde county estimating the number at 13,700 people. Busloads of more are reported still coming from other parts of Mexico. While the U.S. Border Patrol has set up portable toilets and is reported to be providing drinking water to the families piling up, the conditions in this giant camp are horrendous, with Associated Press reporting mounds of trash 10 feet wide, two babies born there, and cases of COVID. In a move more concerned with “how things look” than addressing the Malthusian genocidal economic policies which are driving this humanitarian crisis, the Federal Aviation Authority on Sept. 17 banned overflights of the bridge except for law enforcement requirements, to block videos of the inhuman conditions from being broadcast.
Whatever the immediate trigger for the sudden surge—activists speak of varying rumors that people had a last chance to get U.S. asylum through that entry point—and whoever may be organizing this, the actual cause is well-known: the deliberate policy to keep this Caribbean nation in hideous colonial backwardness. EIR will be shortly issuing the outlines of a program to finally provide modern, healthy, living conditions to the nation of Haiti to which, as such great U.S. leaders as Hamilton, Lincoln, FDR and LaRouche all understood, the U.S. owes a great historical debt.
The reports from Haitian and other migrant support organizations cited in various U.S. media describe what the conditions under which tens of millions of migrants live across the planet. Many of the Haitians now pouring into the U.S. did not leave their home nation recently, but over the years since the January 2010 earthquake which left Haiti in rubble that was never replaced. Many first went to Brazil or Chile, but were forced to become nomads, once again, as jobs disappeared in those countries. For several years, Central American nations and Mexico have been trying to handle thousands of Haitians crossing the Darien Gap, and making their way towards the U.S. on land. Nor are Haitians the only ones now under the Del Rio bridge; Cubans, Venezuelans, and Ecuadorians are showing up.
