Migrants
Greece: 3 dead after boat with migrants hits rocks
Three migrants died and 16 others were rescued off the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday after a dinghy transporting them from the nearby coast of Turkey hit rocks in high winds, authorities said. The coast guard said the three bodies were recovered off the eastern coast of the island, adding that a rescue effort involving two patrol boats, a helicopter and ground crews was underway to search for others possibly missing. None of the people on the dinghy had been given life jackets. The tragedy in the eastern Aegean Sea occurred two days after four children and a woman died when a boat carrying more than 40 migrants smashed into rocks on island of Leros.
On eve of Biden's border visit, migrants fear new rules
Several hundred people marched through the streets of El Paso Saturday afternoon, and when they arrived at a group of migrants huddling outside a church, they sang to them “no estan solos” — “you are not alone.”
Around 300 migrants have taken refuge on sidewalks outside Sacred Heart Church, some of them afraid to seek more formal shelters, advocates say, amid new restrictions meant to crack down on illegal border crossings.
This is the scene that will greet President Joe Biden on his first, politically thorny visit to the southern border Sunday.
The president announced last week that Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans will be expelled to Mexico if they enter the U.S. illegally — an expansion of a pandemic-era immigration policy called Title 42. The new rules will also include offering humanitarian parole for up to 30,000 people a month from those four countries if they apply online and find a financial sponsor.
Biden is scheduled to arrive in El Paso Sunday afternoon before traveling on to Mexico City to meet with North American leaders on Monday and Tuesday.
Read more: Biden agenda, lithium mine, tribes, greens collide in Nevada
Dylan Corbett, who runs the nonprofit Hope Border Institute, said the city is experiencing an increasing “climate of fear.”
He said immigration enforcement agencies have already started ratcheting up deportations to Mexico, and he senses a rising level of tension and confusion.
The president’s new policy expands on an existing effort to stop Venezuelans attempting to enter the U.S., which began in October.
Corbett said many Venezuelans have since been left in limbo, putting a strain on local resources. He said expanding those policies to other migrants will only worsen the circumstances for them on the ground.
“It’s a very difficult situation because they can’t go forward and they can’t go back,” he said. People who aren’t processed can’t leave El Paso because of U.S. law enforcement checkpoints; most have traveled thousands of miles from their homelands and refuse to give up and turn around.
“There will be people in need of protection who will be left behind,” Corbett said.
The new restrictions represent a major change to immigration rules that will stand even if the U.S. Supreme Court ends a Trump-era public health law that allows U.S. authorities to turn away asylum-seekers.
El Paso has swiftly become the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors along the U.S. border with Mexico, occupying the top slots in October and November. Large numbers of Venezuelans began showing up in September, drawn to the relative ease of crossing, robust shelter networks and bus service on both sides of the border, and a major airport to destinations across the United States.
Venezuelans ceased to be a major presence almost overnight after Mexico, under Title 42 authority, agreed on Oct. 12 to accept those who crossed the border illegally into the United States. Nicaraguans have since filled that void. Title 42 restrictions have been applied 2.5 million times to deny migrants a right to seek asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Read more: Biden intends to make his first visit to US-Mexico border
U.S. authorities stopped migrants 53,247 times in November in the El Paso sector, which stretches across 264 miles of desert in West Texas and New Mexico but sees much of its activity in the city of El Paso and suburban Sunland Park, New Mexico. The most recent monthly tally for the sector was more than triple the same period of 2021, with Nicaraguans the top nationality by far, followed by Mexicans, Ecuadoreans, Guatemalans and Cubans.
Many gathered under blankets outside Sacred Heart Church. The church opens its doors at night to families and women, so not all of the hundreds caught in this limbo must sleep outside in the dropping temperatures. Two buses were available for people to warm up and charge their phones. Volunteers come with food and other supplies.
Juan Tovar held a Bible in his hands, his 7-year-old daughter hoisted onto his shoulders. The 32-year-old was a bus driver in Venezuela before he fled with his wife and two daughters because of the political and financial chaos that has consumed their home country.
He has friends in San Antonio prepared to take them in, he said. He’s here to work and provide an education for his daughters, but he’s stuck in El Paso without a permit.
“Everything is in the hands of God,” he said. “We are all humans and we want to stay.”
Another Venezuelan, 22-year-old Jeremy Mejia, overheard and said he had a message he’d like to send to the president.
“President Biden, I ask God to touch your heart so we can stay in this country,” Mejia said. “I ask you to please touch your heart and help us migrants have a better future in the U.S.”
Migrant shelters try to help traumatized assault survivors
Since he began volunteering two months ago for weekend shifts at a clinic in one of this border city’s largest shelters, Dr. Brian Elmore has treated about 100 migrants for respiratory viruses and a handful of more serious emergencies.
But it’s a problem he hasn’t yet managed to address that worries him the most – the worsening trauma that so many migrants carry after long journeys north that often involve witnessing murders and suffering from kidnappings and sexual assault.
“Most of our patients have symptoms of PTSD — I want to initiate a screening for every patient,” said Elmore, an emergency medicine doctor, at Clinica Hope. It was opened this fall by the Catholic nonprofit Hope Border Institute with help from Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, which borders Juarez.
Doctors, social workers, shelter directors, clergy and law enforcement say growing numbers of migrants suffer violence that amounts to torture and are arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border in desperate need of trauma-informed medical and mental health treatment.
But resources for this specialized care are so scarce, and the network of shelters so overwhelmed by new arrivals and migrants who’ve been stuck for months by U.S. asylum policies, that only the most severe cases can be handled.
“Like a pregnant 13-year-old who fled gang rapes, and so needs help with childcare and middle school,” said Zury Reyes Borrero, a case manager in Arizona with the Center for Victims of Torture, who visited that girl when she gave birth. “We get people at their most vulnerable. Some don’t even realize they’re in the U.S.”
In the past six months, Reyes Borrero and a colleague have helped about 100 migrants at Catholic Community Services’ Casa Alitas, a shelter in Tucson, Arizona, that in December was receiving about 700 people daily released by U.S. authorities and coming from countries as distinct as Congo and Mexico.
Read more: Migrants near US border face cold wait for key asylum ruling
Each visit can take hours, as the case workers try to build a rapport with migrants, focusing on empowering them, Reyes Borrero said.
“This is not a community that we talk babbling brook with... They might not have any memory that’s safe,” said Sarah Howell, who runs a clinical practice and a nonprofit treating migrant survivors of torture in Houston.
When she visits patients in their new Texas communities, they routinely introduce relatives or neighbors who also need help with severe trauma but lack the stability and safety necessary for healing.
“The estimated level of need is at least five times higher than we support,” said Leonce Byimana, director of U.S. clinical services for the Center for Victims of Torture, which operates clinics in Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota.
Most migrants are traumatized by what they left behind, as well as what they encountered en route, Byimana said. They need “first-aid mental health” as well as long-term care that’s even harder to arrange once they disperse from border-area shelters to communities across the country, he added.
Left untreated, such trauma can escalate to where it necessitates psychiatric care instead of therapy and self-help, said Dylan Corbett, Hope Border Institute’s executive director.
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the U.S. branch of the global Catholic refugee agency, is planning to ramp up mental health resources in the coming weeks in El Paso, which has seen a surge in crossings, said its director, Joan Rosenhauer.
All along the border, the most staggering trend has been the increase in pregnant women and girls, some younger than 15, who are victims of assault and domestic violence.
Volunteers and advocates are encountering so many of these survivors that they had to focus scarce legal, medical and shelter resources on helping them, leaving hundreds of other victims of political violence and organized crime to fend for themselves.
Service providers and migrants say the most dangerous spot on journeys filled with peril at every step is “la selva” – the Darien Gap jungle separating Colombia from Panama, crossed by increasing numbers of Venezuelans, Cubans and Haitians who first moved to South America and are now seeking safer lives in the United States
Natural perils like deadly snakes and rivers only add to the risks of an area rife with bandits preying on migrants. Loreta Salgado was months into her flight from Cuba when she crossed the Darien.
Read more: Over 280m people leave home for a better life: UN
“We saw many dead, we saw people who were robbed, people who were raped. We saw that,” she repeated, her voice cracking, in a migrant shelter in El Paso a few days before Christmas.
Asked about “la selva,” some women just suck in their breath – and only later reveal having saved their daughters by speeding them along and getting raped themselves, or enduring strained relationships with their partners who were made to watch the assault, Howell said.
“I don’t think it’s the first rape that most women I’ve talked to have experienced. But it’s the most violent and the most shameful, because it was in front of other people,” Howell added.
In many cases, forensic evaluations at border clinics that document mental and physical abuse are also crucial to migrants’ asylum cases, because often no other evidence is available for court proceedings, Byimana said. Asylum is granted to those who cannot return to their countries for fear of persecution on specific grounds, including sometimes very high, systemic levels of violence against women.
But it takes years for asylum cases to be decided in U.S. immigration court, with a current backlog of more than 1.5 million people, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. And that’s with pandemic-era restrictions still in place that allow authorities to turn away or expel most asylum-seekers.
A long wait for resolution, coming on top of a long journey across multiple countries, can intensify the trauma that migrants experience, advocates say.
“There’s a different tension and fear in faces than I’ve seen before,” said Howell, who’s been researching trauma and forced migration for 15 years. “They don’t know how to stop running.”
‘Over 51,000 migrants die, thousands go missing in 8 years’
Over 280 million people have left their countries to pursue “opportunity, dignity, freedom, and a better life”, the UN chief said on Sunday marking the International Migrants Day.
“But unregulated migration along increasingly perilous routes – the cruel realm of traffickers – continues to extract a terrible cost”, Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message marking the day.
He credited the more than 80 per cent of those who cross borders in a safe and orderly manner as powerful drivers of “economic growth, dynamism, and understanding”.
Over the past eight years, at least 51,000 migrants have died, and thousands of others gone missing, said the top UN official.
“Behind each number is a human being – a sister, brother, daughter, son, mother, or father”, he said, reminding that “migrant rights are human rights”.
“They must be respected without discrimination – and irrespective of whether their movement is forced, voluntary, or formally authorized”.
‘Do everything possible’
Guterres urged the world to “do everything possible” to prevent their loss of life – as a humanitarian imperative and a moral and legal obligation.
And he pushed for search and rescue efforts, medical care, expanded and diversified rights-based pathways for migration, and greater international investments in countries of origin “to ensure migration is a choice, not a necessity”.
Read more: International Migrants Day being observed
There is no migration crisis; there is a crisis of solidarity”, the Secretary-General concluded. “Today and every day, let us safeguard our common humanity and secure the rights and dignity of all”.
Realize basic rights
Head of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Gilbert F. Houngbo, shone a light on protecting the rights of the world’s 169 million migrant workers.
“The international community must do better to ensure… [that they] are able to realize their basic human and labour rights”, he spelled out in his message for the day.
Leaving them unable to exercise basic rights renders migrant workers “invisible, vulnerable and undervalued for their contributions to society”, pointed out the most senior ILO official.
And when intersecting with race, ethnicity, and gender, they become even more vulnerable to various forms of discrimination.
Houngbo flagged that migrants do not only go missing on high-risk and desperate journeys.
“Many migrant domestic, agricultural and other workers are isolated and out of reach of those who could protect them”, with the undocumented particularly at risk of abuse.
Fair labour migration
Meanwhile, ILO supports governments, employers and workers to make fair labour migration a reality.
Like all employees, migrant workers are entitled to labour standards and international human rights protections, including freedom of association and collective bargaining, non-discrimination, and safe and healthy working environments, upheld the ILO chief.
They should also be entitled to social protection, development and recognition.
To make these rights a reality,Houngbo stressed the key importance of fair recruitment, including eliminating recruitment fees charged to migrant workers, which can help eradicate human trafficking and forced labour.
Read more: US plans for more migrant releases when asylum limits end
“Access to decent work is a key strategy to realize migrants’ development potential and contribution to society,” he said.
Meanwhile, in his message, the head of the International Migration Organization (IMO), António Vitorino, described migrants as “being a cornerstone of development and progress”.
“We can’t let the politicization of migration, hostility and divisive narratives divert us from the values that matter most”, he urged.
Swift return of irregular migrants to help promote legal migration: European Commissioner
European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson has said sending the irregular migrants back to the country of origin swiftly from the European countries will help manage migration safely together moving away from irregular to regular.
“It is important that those who arrive irregularly should be sent back swiftly to the country of origin - Bangladesh - to really show that this is not the way to come to the European countries,” she told UNB while responding to a question.
EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley accompanied the European Commissioner during the interview here on Friday.
Also read: FM Momen urges Japan to stand by Bangladesh in its development journey
Johansson, also a former Minister for Employment and Integration of Sweden, said the cooperation on return has really increased and deepened in recent times with immediate reaction as the member states now say they are ready to open for more labour migration and more legal pathways.
She said it is important to say that irregular migration cannot be stopped fully without making better opportunities through legal ways.
The European Commissioner said there are many things they can do together including efforts to give the right information to the people about the risk of irregular arrivals in Europe.
77 migrants killed as boat sinks off Syrian coast
At least 77 people were killed when a boat carrying migrants sank off Syria this week, the country’s health minister said Friday, amid fears the death toll could be far higher.
The incident was deadliest so far as a surging number of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians have been trying to flee crisis-hit Lebanon by sea for a better future in Europe. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs while the Lebanese pound has dropped more than 90% in value, eradicating the purchasing power of thousands of families that now live in extreme poverty.
Syrian authorities said victims’ relatives have started crossing from Lebanon into Syria to help identify their loved ones and retrieve their bodies. The vessel left Lebanon on Tuesday and news of what happened first started to emerge on Thursday afternoon. The boat was carrying Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinians.
Syrian state-run TV quoted Health Minister Mohammed Hassan Ghabbash as saying 20 people were rescued and were being treated at al-Basel hospital in Syria’s coastal city of Tartus. He added that medical authorities have been on alert since Thursday afternoon to help in the search operations.
An official at al-Basel, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations, told The Associated Press that eight of those rescued were in intensive care. The official also confirmed the 77 deaths. There were conflicting reports on how many people were on board the vessel when it sank, with some saying at least 120. Details about the ship, such as its size and capacity, were also not clear.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamie said the survivors included 12 Syrians, five Lebanese and three Palestinians. Eight bodies have been brought back to Lebanon early Friday, according to Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.
After sunset Friday, bodies of more victims, including two Palestinians, were brought to Lebanon. They were taken in seven ambulances and headed south from the Arida border crossing toward the northern city of Tripoli.
Read: Border patrol: 9 migrants die crossing swift Texas river
Earlier in the day, Tartus governor Abdul-Halim Khalil told the pro-government Sham FM Radio that the search was underway for more bodies off his country’s coast. Khalil said the boat sank on Wednesday.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, quoted a port official as saying that 31 bodies were washed ashore while the rest were picked up by Syrian boats in a search operation that started Thursday evening.
Wissam Tellawi, one of the survivors being treated at al-Basel, lost two daughters. His wife and two sons are still missing. The bodies of his daughters, Mae and Maya, were brought to Lebanon early Friday and buried in their northern hometown of Qarqaf.
“He told me by telephone, ‘I am fine’ but the children are lost,” said Tellawi’s father, who identified himself as Abu Mahmoud. The father told the local Al-Jadeed TV that his son gave smugglers the family’s apartment in return for taking him and his family to Europe.
In the aftermath of the disaster, the Lebanese army said troops stormed Friday the homes of several suspected smugglers, detaining four in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest and most impoverished. Three others were detained in the nearby village of Deir Ammar.
The military said the suspects were involved in smuggling of migrants by sea while others were planning to buy boats for the same reason.
Lebanon,— with a population of 6 million, including 1 million Syrian refugees, has been in the grips of a severe economic meltdown since late 2019 that has pulled over three-quarters of the population into poverty.
For years, it was a country that received refugees from Mideast wars and conflicts but the economic crisis, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement, has changed that dramatically.
Read: 7 migrants die, 280 rescued off Italian island of Lampedusa
Prices have been skyrocketing as a result of hyperinflation, forcing many to sell their belongings to pay for smugglers to take them to Europe as the migration intensified in recent months.
In April, a boat carrying dozens of Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians trying to migrate by sea to Italy went down more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Tripoli, following a confrontation with the Lebanese navy. Dozens were killed in the incident.
On Wednesday, Lebanese officials said naval forces rescued a boat carrying 55 migrants after it faced technical problems about 11 kilometers (7 miles) off the coast of the northern region of Akkar. It said those rescued included two pregnant women and two children.
28 million victims of forced labour: report
Around 50 million people around the world are living in modern day slavery, among whom 28 million are victims of forced labour, says a report published today.
The ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Report 2022’, prepared by IOM, Walk Free and International Labour Organization (ILO), provides a detailed picture of how people are being forced to do certain jobs across the globe.
The report makes a shocking revelation, which is that 52 percent of all forced labour can be found in upper-middle or high-income countries.
According to the report, 86 percent of forced labour are in the private sector, while state-imposed forced labour accounts for 14 percent. Almost one in eight of all those in forced labour are children (3.3 million), and more than half are in commercial sexual exploitation.
Read: One-in-four people do not feel valued at work: ILO
The report also says that migrant workers are three times more likely to be in forced labour than non-migrant adult workers. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to forced labour and trafficking due to irregular or poorly governed migration and unfair, unethical recruitment practices.
The report talks about Qatar, a gulf country which has recently obtained the reputation for labour rights violations relating to migrants working there focusing on the FIFA World Cup 2022.
The report proposes a number of recommendations which, if implemented, would mark significant progress towards ending modern slavery. They include improving and enforcing laws and labour inspections, ending state-imposed forced labour, stronger measures to combat forced labour and trafficking in business and supply chains, extending social protection, and strengthening legal protections.
Read: Workers' rights, collective bargaining essential for global recovery: ILO
Some other measures suggested by the report include addressing the increased risk of trafficking and forced labour for migrant workers, promoting fair and ethical recruitment, and greater support for women, girls and vulnerable individuals.
Border patrol: 9 migrants die crossing swift Texas river
Officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border searched for more victims Saturday after at least nine migrants died while trying to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande, a dangerous border-crossing attempt in an area where the river level had risen by more than 2 feet in a single day.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials discovered the victims near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, following days of heavy rains. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered three, according to a CBP statement. It is one of the deadliest drownings on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent history.
The river, which was a little more than 3 feet (90 centimeters) deep at the start of the week, reached more than 5 feet (1.5 meters) on Thursday, and the water was flowing five times faster than usual, according to the National Weather Service.
The CBP said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody.
CBP did not say what country or countries the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on rescue and search operations. Local agencies in Texas that were involved have not responded to requests for information.
Read: Boat carrying Haitian migrants sinks off Bahamas, killing 17
Among the bodies recovered from the river by Mexican authorities was a man and a pregnant woman, although their nationalities were unknown, said Francisco Contreras, a member of Civil Protection in the Mexican border state of Coahuila. No details were released about the third body found.
The Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley a distant second at about 35,000. Eagle Pass is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio.
Chief Patrol Agent Jason Owens of the Del Rio sector said that despite dangerous currents from recent rainfall, Border Patrol agents in the sector continue to encounter groups as large as 100 or 200 people trying to cross the Rio Grande each day.
“In an effort to prevent further loss of life, we are asking everyone to please avoid crossing illegally,” Owens said in a statement.
Among the reasons the area has become popular for migrants in recent years is that it is not as strongly controlled by cartels and is perceived to be somewhat safer, said Stephanie Leutert, director of Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the University of Texas' Center for International Security and Law.
“It might be a different price. It might be seen as safer. It might keep you out of cities that are notoriously dangerous," Leutert said. “Those cities (in the Del Rio sector) definitely have had a reputation as being safer than say, Nueva Laredo."
The area draws migrants from dozens of countries, many of them families with young children. About six of 10 stops in the Del Rio sector in July were migrants from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua. The region also has been a popular crossing point for migrants from Haiti, thousands of whom have been stuck in border towns since 2016, when the Obama administration abruptly halted a policy that initially allowed them in on humanitarian grounds.
The sector, which extends 245 miles (395 kilometers) along the Río Grande, has been especially dangerous because river currents can be deceptively fast and change quickly. Crossing the river can be challenging even for strong swimmers.
“There are places when the water levels are down where you could wade across, but when the river is up it's extremely dangerous, especially if you're carrying kids or trying to help someone who is not a strong swimmer," Leutert said.
In a news release last month, CBP said it had discovered bodies of more than 200 dead migrants in the sector from October through July.
Read: 51 migrants die after trailer abandoned in San Antonio heat
This year is on track to break last year’s record for the most deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014, when the U.N. International Organization for Migration began keeping record. The organization has tallied more than 4,000 deaths on the border since 2014, based on news reports and other sources, including 728 last year and 412 during the first seven months of this year, often from dehydration or drowning. June was the fourth-deadliest month on record, with 138 fatalities.
The Border Patrol has not released official tallies since 2020.
In June, 53 migrants were found dead or dying in a tractor-trailer on a back road in San Antonio in the deadliest documented tragedy to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico.
“The whole journey speaks to the desperation of people," Leutert said. “They know that crossing the river is dangerous. They know that hiking through ranchland is dangerous. They know that crossing Mexico as a foreigner is dangerous. But they’re willing to do this because what they’re leaving behind is, to them, a worse possibility than facing risk and trying for a better opportunity in the U.S."
Some of the busiest crossings on the border — including Eagle Pass and Yuma, Arizona — were relatively quiet two years ago and now largely draw migrants from outside Mexico and Central America’s ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico has agreed to take migrants from the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries, as well as its own nationals, if they are expelled from the United States under Title 42, the pandemic rule in effect since March 2020 that denies rights to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
People from other countries are likely to be released into the United States on humanitarian parole or with notices to appear in immigration court because the U.S. has difficulty flying them home due to costs, strained diplomatic relations or other considerations. In the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, only one of every four stops in July were processed under the pandemic rule, compared to about half across the rest of the border, according to government figures.
Venezuelans were by far the most common nationality encountered by Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio sector in July, accounting for 14,120 of 49,563 stops, or nearly three in 10. They were followed by Cubans, who were stopped 10,275 times, and then by Mexicans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Colombians, in that order.
As more people crossed into South Texas in the 2010s, Brooks County became a death trap for many migrants who tried walking around a Border Patrol highway checkpoint in the town of Falfurrias, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of the border. Smugglers dropped them off before the checkpoint and made arrangements to pick them up on the other side, but some perished on the way from dehydration.
The Baboquivari Mountains in Arizona and ranches in Texas’ Brooks County still draw Border Patrol agents and grief-stricken families hoping to rescue migrants or, if not, find corpses, but the deceptively strong currents around the Texas towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio have become increasingly dangerous as the area has become one of the most popular spots to enter the United States illegally.
Not all victims are migrants. In April this year, the body of a Texas guardsman was recovered from the Rio Grande. He had jumped in to try to help a migrant who was struggling in the water.
Border Patrol: 8 migrants found dead in Rio Grande at Texas
At least eight migrants were found dead in the Rio Grande after dozens attempted a hazardous crossing near Eagle Pass, Texas, officials said Friday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials made the discovery Thursday while responding to a large group of people crossing the river following days of heavy rains that had resulted in particularly swift currents. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered two others, according to a CBP statement.
The agency said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody. Officials on both sides of the border continue searching for any possible victims, the CBP said.
CPD did not say what country or countries the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on the rescue or search. Local agencies in Texas that were involved did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.
Also read: Gunman fatally shoots 2, wounds 3 Texas cops, takes own life
The Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley a distant second at about 35,000.
The area draws migrants from dozens of countries, many of them in families with young children. About 6 of 10 stops in the Del Rio sector in July were migrants from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua.
The sector, which extends 245 miles (395 kilometers) along the Río Grande, has been especially dangerous because river currents can be deceptively fast and change quickly. Crossing the river can be challenging even for strong swimmers.
In a news release last month, CPD said it had discovered bodies of more than 200 dead migrants in the sector from October through July.
Surveys by the U.N. International Organization for Migration and others point to rising fatalities as the number of crossing attempts have soared. In the last three decades, thousands have died attempting to enter the United States from Mexico, often from dehydration or drowning.
In June, 53 migrants were found dead or dying in a tractor-trailer on a back road in San Antonio in the deadliest tragedy to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico.
Uptick in migrants heading home as world rebounds from Covid: IOM
Global migration, which had decreased by almost 27 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic, has begun to rebound to pre-pandemic levels, according to a recent report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
In 2021, the IOM assisted 49,795 migrants to return to their countries of origin, representing an increase of 18 percent from the previous year, the UN migration agency's "Return and Reintegration Key Highlights 2021," published Thursday, said.
Yitna Getachew, head of the agency's Protection Division, said noteworthy in the report is the continued trend of increasing returns from transit countries in other host regions outside Europe.
Read: Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Maldives 'must collect visas'
In 2021, Niger was the largest beneficiary of the IOM's efforts to assist in dignified returns, with the UN agency helping 10,573 head home. Niger's beneficiaries dramatically overshadow any nation in Europe. However, Europe's accumulated beneficiaries still outnumber Niger.
The bedrock of assisted voluntary return programmes are reintegration schemes, which provide opportunities to returnees and promote sustainable development, the IOM said.
In 2021, the IOM offices in 121 countries supported 113,331 reintegration activities at the individual, community, and structural levels.
Overall, the top three countries, including both host and countries of origin, that provided reintegration support in 2021 were Germany, Nigeria and Guinea.
Read: Dhaka: Inadequate efforts for climate migrants may lead to global security risk
The support consisted mainly of social and economic assistance, as well as reintegration counselling.
The aims of these multi-dimensional schemes are to ensure a level of economic self-sufficiency, social stability and psychological well-being to make further migration a choice rather than a necessity.