últimas notícias

CIUDAD ACUÑA, Mexico — Mexican authorities carrying rifles and flashlights combed through this city’s downtown early Wednesday, searching for the Haitians who were in hiding after being pushed to flee the US just days ago.

“If you send me to Haiti, I have no one there to help me,” said a father, holding a shard of glass to keep Mexican authorities from entering a hotel room holding his family. “I can’t go back.”

Returning to Mexico was a last resort for the Haitians after crossing the Rio Grande and setting up camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Food, water, and medicine were lacking. Border Patrol agents on horseback chased them. Children were getting sick. There was no avoiding COVID-19. President Joe Biden’s administration started loading people onto planes and flying them back to Haiti, a place many of the immigrants haven’t lived in for years.

Though Mexico has easier access to supplies and shelter (under the bridge, people slept on rocks, dirt, and cardboard), authorities there inflict nights of terror on those hiding from deportation. It’s the largely unseen impact of the Biden administration’s hardline handling of the Haitian immigration to the United States and years of Mexico being pressured by the US to stop immigrants from ever reaching the border.

They came to the Hotel Coahuila around 2 a.m. National Guard and Mexican immigration agents marched in wearing bulletproof vests and helmets and holding long guns. The quiet street below was suddenly filled with smashing sounds, then the crack of shattered glass and the shrieks of a Haitian family.

Hotel security footage viewed by BuzzFeed News shows part of what happened inside: a Haitian father, standing in the doorway of his hotel room — his son and wife inside — with authorities to his left and right in the hallway.

In his bloody hand is a large chunk of sharp glass. It was part of a dresser mirror, possibly used to try to block the tiny room’s wooden door that broke in the struggle between the family and the agents.

He used the glass, despite it digging into his skin, to hold at bay at least a dozen armed soldiers and agents in the narrow hallway.

There is nothing in Haiti for his family, he told them, while holding the glass with two hands close to his chest, sometimes using one hand to make a motion dismissing the agents. He kept his back to the group of officials to his left, down the hall, but frequently peered over his shoulder to see where they were. A bright beam from an agent’s flashlight lit up the floor.

The father held off the agents for about 10 minutes as raids were conducted throughout the hotel. He was successful. Eventually, the authorities left him and his family alone.

Others were not as fortunate. The agents sped off with two vans of other immigrants they had pulled out of about 10 rooms of the hotel.

Moments later, the father, carrying his son in one hand and dripping blood from the other, ran down the hotel’s small steps, followed by his partner and another couple with a child. They then ran to the front of the hotel and into the dark streets to hide again. They weren’t going to wait for Mexican authorities to return.