US sends in lasso-wielding police on horseback to turn back Haitian migrants

Police on horseback wielding lassos have been deployed to stop thousands of Haitian migrants from illegally crossing the Rio Grande into the US.

Some 16,000 mostly Haitian migrants have crossed into the Texas city of Del Rio from Mexico in the past fortnight, making the journey after hearing rumours that they would be allowed to enter the US.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the US homeland security secretary, visited the area on Monday, and said: "We are very concerned that Haitians who are taking this irregular migration path are receiving false information that the border is open or that temporary protected status is available. I want to make sure that it's known that this is not the way to come to the US.

"Trying to enter the United States illegally is not worth the tragedy, the money or the effort."

Many migrants camped on the US side had been going back to Mexico to pick up basic supplies including food, water and nappies, but some were seized by the mounted officials as they tried to return.

As well as shutting the bridge to legitimate cross-border traffic, officials on both sides of the Rio Grande waterway have sealed off the illegal crossing point.

Border agents on horseback have been seen chasing people along the riverbank, in a tactic campaigners have called “horrifying.”

The White House said that footage appearing to show border patrol agents using whips against Haitian migrants coming into the United States from Mexico was unacceptable and not appropriate.

"I have seen some of the footage. I don't have the full context. I can't imagine what context would make that appropriate," Jen Psaki, a White House spokesman, told reporters. "I don't think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate."

"We're trapped," said Joncito Jean, 37, who had spent three days sleeping on a sheet on the ground with his wife and children, aged three and four. He said he regretted the decision to come to the US.

"There are no humane conditions. We have to break out to buy water."

Alix Desulmhe, chairman of the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network said: “These people should be protected, not attacked. It is horrifying and must stop.”

Under intense pressure from local officials, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who said that Joe Biden, the US president, was handling the border crisis “as badly as the evacuation from Afghanistan,” the government has increased the number of deportation flights to Haiti and is using a sweeping public health order to speed up the evictions.

More than 320 migrants were flown to Port-au-Prince on three flights on Sunday, while six more planes are expected to depart in the coming days.

US Border Patrol chief Raul Oritz, a Del Rio native, said that 3,000 people had already been moved on from the camp and that "over the next six to seven days our goal is to process the 12,662 migrants that we have underneath that bridge”.