The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) released the following statement:
“This week’s shocking images of border patrol agents whipping and stampeding Haitian asylum seekers on the southern border are appalling yet unsurprising. This is not atypical behavior by the U.S. border patrol (CBP). The difference this time is that there was a photographer present to expose this incident to the world. How many other incidents like this go unreported everyday? The Department of Homeland Security has launched an investigation into this incident but this is not nearly enough. The entire border patrol agency, which has grown threefold in the last twenty years, must not only be investigated but be held accountable for all their actions.
Even while the administration launches its investigation into this particular incident, it continues to cruelly deport Haitians en masse from the U.S.- using Title 42 as justification – back to Haiti, a country currently in the throes of severe political and environmental crises, and it has also callously vowed to break up the Haitian migrant camp at Del Rio, Texas.
Haitian migrants are refugees seeking safety and a better life in the U.S. and they should be treated as such. We remind those in positions of power that it is not illegal to seek asylum in the United States. The Biden Administration and DHS must stop all deportations. They must also terminate Title 42, which is an illegal, racist policy that deprives Black, Brown and Indiginous immigrants of their asylum rights and violates the human rights of those subject to it. All Haitian asylum seekers at the border must be granted humanitarian parole to allow them to be transferred to safer conditions and away from CBP mistreatment, and they must be provided safe shelter, water, food and health care while they await an opportunity to request protection. The Biden administration has stayed complicit in the tortures of Title 42 and it’s up to us, the people to let them know we will not tolerate it.”