On Wednesday, following the backlash regarding the means in which Border Patrol agents moved migrants in Del Rio with horses earlier this week, Representative Maxine Waters slammed the actions of the agents.
“What the hell are we doing here? What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery,” said Waters.
“Cowboys, with their reins at hand whipping black people, Haitians, into the water where they’re scrambling and falling down when allot here trying to do is escape from violence in their country,” she continued.
Waters echoed a statement similar to many other officials and prominent figures, who said that Border Patrol agents were whipping Haitians. Unlike these other people though, Waters did at least say that the whip-like item in their hands were reins, not whips themselves. At the time of publication, there is no evidence that any agents “whipped” Haitians.
During the White House press briefing on Wednesday, correspondent April Ryan asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki about the administration’s stance on the Haitian immigrant crisis.
“Because black leaders are making big asks of this crisis moment,” Ryan said.
They’re asking for the asylum process,” she said. “What does that look like? Reverend Al Sharpton is going to the border tomorrow, to see what that looks like, if people are actually being able to get asylum, who’s here. Also be you talked about the condemnation of what the patrol agents were doing with the reins or with whatever with the intent to lash to hurt people to keep them away from the border. They want to know is that practice going to still be in place? Horses, and the lashing, those kinds of issues.”
Psaki said that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas conducting an investigation into the treatment of the immigrants in Del Rio by Biden administration border officers.
Mayorkas “has made clear he wants to happen quickly, and he wants the outcome to be done by next week. Once that process is concluded, that will be a deterrent that will help be a deterrent in any policy decisions and personnel decisions,” said Psaki.
“I think what what we are conveying to anyone who our partners,” Psaki said, “whether they are civil rights leaders, members of the CBC and others who have important questions here is how outraged we also are by these photos in this video, how our commitment to this investigation, but also how our immigration processing system works.”
