Increased number of migrants from Africa turning up at US southern border

Thousands of Africans from Cameroon, Congo and other violence-plagued countries are preparing to cross over the southern border of the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection reports.

• Border agents from the Del Rio area of Texas sounded the alarm on May 31 about a group of 116 African migrants, sitting on the US side of the Rio Grande, waiting to be arrested.
• Then, in early June, agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, detained another group of Central African families. In all, more than 500 Africans in a single week crossed the Del Rio border zone.
• Late in June, agents arrested yet another 310 mostly Haitian and African migrants.
• Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records. The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Until recently, African migrants headed to Europe, but the European Union has slammed the door on them. Now African migrants who head to Europe face indefinite detention in facilities on the north coast of Libya. According to the United Nations, these detention centers are “an outrage to the conscience of humanity.” Toilet facilities are nonexistent, food is crawling with maggots, many adults succumb to severe malnutrition and rape and torture are commonplace.

That’s why many African migrants are coming to the United States. They’re cobbling together airfare to Ecuador (which has a no-visa policy) and then trekking through Panama, north through Central America to the US border.

The African migration is indicative of how much larger the humanitarian crisis at the southern border could get.

[New York Post]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation, Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.