Why Are Thousands of Haitians Suddenly at the Border?

CLAY: We begin with a big question: How is it that suddenly, between 12,000 and 14,000 would-be immigrants illegally cross the border — most of them from Haiti, which is an island nation? How have they suddenly all ended up simultaneously in Del Rio, Texas, in such massive numbers? Remember, Del Rio, Texas, only has around 35,000 people who live in that town in general, and it hasn’t been a traditional hot spot in terms of border crossings, at least not historically.

What happened? Who may have paid or financed this number of people to suddenly make their way from South America? How did all of these Haitians end up in South America in the first place to make an attempt to cross the border in the United States? These are all big questions that need to be answered, but we begin with Secretary Mayorkas who has finally made a trip down to the border. He was asked whether or not this was a crisis, and he essentially refused to answer.

MAYORKAS: I don’t think we expected the rapidity of the increase that occurred. We are realistic about the human tragedy of this, but we have a responsibility not only to the well-being of the migrants themselves, but the well-being of the local communities and the American public.

CLAY: Joe Biden was asked about this situation. It’s one of many crises that are currently occurring in the midst of his failed first-year presidency. And our Dear Leader, well, he didn’t have much to say.

BIDEN HANDLER: Thanks guys, let’s go!

REPORTER: Mr. President, do you [inaudible] Haitian migrants [inaudible] —

BIDEN HANDLER: Thank you guys, let’s go. Thank you, let’s go. Thank you, let’s go. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let’s go, thank you. Come on, guys! Let’s go. Thank you. Let’s go, let’s go. Thank you. Come on, let’s go.

BUCK: That’s gotta be quite a job, Clay.

CLAY: Oh, yes.

BUCK: They shut down the press so they can’t actually get mumbling, stumbling Joe to say anything about this.

CLAY: It sounds like a kindergarten class.

BUCK: To your question about the coordination, I will tell you, I just spoke yesterday to a friend on Border Patrol at some length about this, and they don’t know, they don’t know yet exactly how it’s gone. But I do know that in other situations — and this goes back to the caravans coming out of South America, particularly out of Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s social media coordination — so individuals who coordinate on social media — and then the coyotes, the human smugglers working for the cartels will contact different groups and work with them, communicate with them and obviously set up the payment system.

I was down in the Rio Grande section seeing this. You could see, Clay, all over the place these little wristbands that had been discarded to show that people, every individual — man, woman, and child crossing — had paid. Just to give everyone a sense of how much of a business this is, it was like one of those nightclubs.

Instead of a stamp or a bracelet for a nightclub, you’re doing it for a drug cartel that’s getting thousands of dollars a head to bring you in so there is digital coordination and with the cartels as well they decide that they’re gonna start moving groups of people. What’s so interesting about this is obviously getting from Haiti to Mexico is not a simple thing.

But a lot of, even most of these Haitian migrants are coming out of South America. They have already fled Haiti and for some reason believe that now was a good time. I think we all know it’s ’cause the Biden’s in charge. Now is a particularly good time to try to play the system and get into the United States illegally.

So that’s the sum total what I could get from Border Patrol yesterday was basically, “We know there’s coordination. We know it’s a major operation. They’re not coming from Haiti for the most part. They’re actually coming from countries south of Mexico.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they don’t have much information on the logistics yet of how this was organized and why now. So these are big questions. If we had a different administration, I think they’d want to get more to the bottom of it. I have a feeling this administration would rather sit around and let this pass.

CLAY: And what’s intriguing about it, too, is it feels set up in the context of, if you watched and saw all of the attention for Border Patrol who are on horses and their attempt to restrain people, that went viral. “Oh, my God. They’re whipping Haitians, would-be Haitian immigrants.” It feels set up as a distraction of sorts. Right?

BUCK: That was a lie too. They weren’t whipping. Just to be clear for everybody, the story that went viral — and even Jen Psaki weighed in on this one saying, “Oh, it looks so horrible. Extremely troubling,” the usual stuff. Well, it’s not extremely troubling if it’s not true, right? A thing that did not happen should not be described by the White House press secretary as extremely troubling, but we all understand this is the favorite media game.