'Feels like another country': Shocking scenes from the Del Rio migrant tent camp
DEL RIO, Texas — Yellow police tape is all there is holding back a small city’s worth of migrants from escaping the underbelly of an international bridge where they have camped out for days and become increasingly on edge.
Over the past five days, the grassy city land under the Del Rio-Acuna International Bridge has turned into a massive campsite for migrants who cross the Rio Grande River and wait for the Border Patrol to take them into custody. While Border Patrol agents are used to large numbers of noncitizens crossing, many said they have never seen anything like this.
Migrants who came across the border, before Texas troopers rolled up in full force on Saturday, weaved their way through the massive campsite and picked out their own dwelling spot, where they could expect to sleep and live for several days before being taken into custody.
Just a handful of federal agents were on-site below the bridge on Thursday, the day 4,000 people streamed across. Rather than running past the agents, the migrants, who are primarily from Haiti, waited at the bridge under the presumption that they would be detained then released into the United States with legal documents permitting them to remain here.
Some people began hand-cutting tall wild plants a few hundred feet in either direction then building tent-like shelters with the branches. Now, hundreds of plant-made huts dot the east and west sides of the bridge.
“You turn the corner, and then you start to see up here, right, this sea of people just going in two directions,” said Jon Anfinsen, the National Border Patrol Council’s president of the Del Rio region. “You walk through here, and it really feels like another country.”
Clothing drapes the handmade tents and portable toilet tops, as do blankets and sheets that were brought over from Mexico. Backpacks and luggage are stacked up all over the place. Garbage piles stretch five, six, seven feet into the air, but the worst smell comes from the dozens of portable toilets on the west side of the camp.
The 70 toilets are merely feet away from the only fresh water, brought in in large barrels because there is no water on site. …
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/on-the-ground-at-the-del-rio-migrant-tent-camp
Imagine the stinch