DHS Secretary: As Many as 12,000 Illegal Haitian Immigrants Released Into the US in Recent Days

Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the International Bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sept. 26 that a significant number of Haitian illegal immigrants who had amassed along the U.S.—Mexico border last week are being released into the United States.

About 12,400 of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that some 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only about 3,000 are in detention, he said.

“Approximately, I think it’s about 10,000 or so, 12,000,” Mayorkas told “Fox News Sunday” when he was asked about the number of Haitian illegal aliens who have been released into the interior of the United States. The number could rise as 5,000 more cases are processed, he said.

Mayorkas said the number of those being released “could be even higher” and that the “number that are returned could be even higher.”

“What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it,” Mayorkas said, adding that the U.S. “immigration system is broken.”

“Legislative reform is needed.”

The Department of Justice estimated in 2017 that about 43 percent of illegal aliens released into the United States miss their immigration court hearings. When asked about what will happen to those of the 12,000 who were released in the past week and miss their hearings, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.

“We have enforcement guidelines in place that provide that individuals who are recent border crossers who do not show up for their hearings are enforcement priorities, and will be removed,” he said.

Last week, more than 15,000 Haitians congregated underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and essentially constructed a shantytown before numerous local officials sounded the alarm that a humanitarian crisis was brewing.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas updates reporters in Washington on the effort to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the United States on Sept. 3, 2021. J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

DHS officials, including Mayorkas, said on Sept. 24 that the encampment under the bridge had been cleared out. A day later, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that the Texas border crossing will be partially reopened.

The agency also said it’s planning to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some progressive groups.

The number of people at the Del Rio encampment peaked last weekend, as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing. While Mayorkas and other White House officials have asserted that the border is closed, Republicans have said that the administration’s decision to rescind a number of Trump-era immigrant orders has triggered a surge of illegal immigration.

Mayorkas and other senior officials have also dedicated a significant amount of time in news conferences condemning some Border Patrol agents who were seen on horseback near Haitians who had crossed the border illegally. The photographer who shot those pictures last week said that the agents weren’t whipping the migrants, as some officials and Democratic lawmakers had claimed.

“Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses,” photographer Paul Ratje told local station KTSM, explaining the situation on the ground.

“I’ve never seen them whip anyone. He was swinging it [the reins], but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.