Haitian migrants cleared from camp at Texas border but controversy continues
Source: ABC News
After more than a week of growing controversy, immigration authorities in Del Rio, Texas, on Friday finished clearing out an encampment of mostly Haitian migrants that at one point expanded to about 15,000 people. "As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants in the camp, underneath the Del Rio International Bridge," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House briefing Friday afternoon.
So far, more than a dozen flights have taken about 2,000 people back to Haiti, according to the Department of Homeland Security. About 3,900 have been moved from the camp for processing or expulsion.
The U.S. government has not accounted for all the migrants in the camp, but officials on Thursday said "several thousand" had returned to Mexico. Other government officials who spoke directly to ABC News but were not authorized to officially provide the information said "thousands" more have been placed in "removal proceedings" and released in the U.S.
Those proceedings can take time, officials said, in part because migrants in removal proceedings are legally allowed to make a claim of asylum. Asylum cases can take anywhere from six months and several years with the massive case backlog at immigration courts across the country.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/haitian-migrants-cleared-camp-texas-border-controversy-continues/story?id=80215104
With the assassination of Haiti's President back in July, I expect there would be asylum seekers...
= new reply since forum marked as read
since that is the only French-speaking country in South America and I did just find this - https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33648-haiti-social-mass-arrival-in-french-guiana-of-haitian-asylum-seekers.html
So that sortof gave me one clue of all the machinations going on in South America and it sortof confirmed some of my suspicions about what was going with the Texas situation and the real "how" (i.e., this thing about all of those people "walking" all that way is ridiculous) . 
I must have missed school that day. Thanks even more! 
That human trafficking thing seems to be a real money-maker, on so many fronts.
were often brought part of the way there via that type of thing. 
the "Haitian boat people" narrative was one tiny part of their actual migration pattern and was pretty much "all" that we were "shown" that directly impacted the U.S,. and was of course the only thing that made the news here.
However these folks left Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and scattered all over the Caribbean and South America (not just trying to come directly to the U.S.), which was surprising to me that I didn't even think of that obvious scenario, but it made sense. The President at the time of that quake - René Préval, had embraced and established trade with many of the OAS countries - notably South America, and particularly Venezuela when Chavez was there, so that is probably the source of that "connection".
I found this that has added more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle and again, makes the situation much clearer regarding Brazil (which just didn't connect until now, regarding "why there"? ) -
After the 2010 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation, tens of thousands of people traveled to Brazil and Chile. Now they are looking to enter the US, but face many challenges on the journey
Santiago Torrado|Rocío Montes|Lorena Arroyo|Carla Jiménez|Jorge Galindo
Bogotá / Santiago de Chile / Mexico / São Paulo - 11 Aug 2021 - 8:00 EDT
Haitian migration to Latin America has been widely documented for the last decade, but a new and dangerous focus point is growing on the jungle border between Colombia and Panama. Thousands of migrants are currently stuck in the Colombian municipality of Necoclí, creating a bottleneck at the Darién Gap. If they make it through the dense jungle, their journey continues through Central America towards the north, with the United States as the desired destination. As for so many others, Mexico has become a host nation for the Haitian exodus as they attempt to cross the border into the United States. It is a crisis with unprecedented numbers, as Haiti remains mired in instability after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
(snip)
The migratory earthquake
Although instability is recurrent in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the initial exodus had a clear trigger: the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010. Since then, many Haitians have migrated to South America, mainly to Brazil. At that time, construction workers were in demand to build the infrastructure for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. They arrived in the giant South American country mainly through Acre and Amazonas states, in the north of the country. As of August 2020, there were more than 143,000 Haitians in Brazil, with a strong presence in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, on the border with Argentina. Most obtained permanent residency for humanitarian reasons and Haitians became one of the largest immigrant and refugee communities until they were overtaken by Venezuelans in 2018. The pandemic sharply reduced this flow of Haitian migrants. With no job opportunities and the economy at a standstill, many tried to move to other countries, while the number of requests for residency and asylum fell, according to data from the Immigration Department of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice. In 2020, 6,613 applications for refugee status were registered, down 40% from the previous year.
(snip)
https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-08-11/the-silent-exodus-of-latin-americas-haitian-population.html
And this helped to confirm and was a ding ding ding ding ding ding ding moment -
By Juliet Macur
Oct. 2, 2009
COPENHAGEN — When Rio de Janeiro was elected host city for the 2016 Olympic Games on Friday, the room where its bid team gathered turned into a boisterous party with members in uniform navy or moss green blazers hugging, dancing, crying and waving Brazilian flags. The bid leader, Carlos Arthur Nuzman, yelled, “We did it! We did it!”
Rio and Chicago had gone into the day considered the favorites, ahead of Tokyo and Madrid. But by the time Rio was chosen by the International Olympic Committee to become the first South American city to host the Olympics, the Chicago delegation and its star-studded supporters were nowhere in sight. They had already left the building.
Despite the support of President Obama, who flew in specifically to address the I.O.C. voters, Chicago finished last, out of the running in the first round of voting, with a paltry 18 of a total 94 votes. Tokyo received 22, with Rio getting 26 and Madrid 28. In each round, until one city gains a majority, the low vote-getter is eliminated. After Chicago was tossed aside, nearly all of its votes went straight to Rio in the second round. In the third, after Tokyo was eliminated, Rio won handily, 66-32.
The chance to bring the Olympics to a continent that had never hosted the Games worked in Rio’s favor. During its presentation, the bid team showed a graphic of the world and marked all the places that have held an Olympics. South America was glaringly bare.
(snip)
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/sports/03olympics.html
So a year before that 2010 earthquake, Rio won their bid for the 2016 Olympics and having minimal (true) infrastructure to host, they needed to create it fast, and workers to do that were needed and Haitian immigrants could fill the bill - and probably for all sorts of associated functions surrounding the Olympics like hospitality services (and according to the article, the same had been needed for the earlier World Cup events).
So you had this (per the UN's Migration organization) -
and then this -
Am guessing that after that 2nd earthquake, the instability of Haiti after the assassination of the President there, and then probably noticing the airlifts of the Afghans here, they made their move and I expect many of them were aided by shady "immigrant services" smugglers promising transport to the border and (fake) visas for a big fee.
