Migrants leave US-Mexican border camps

CIUDAD ACUA, Mexico: Almost all of the mostly Haitian migrants who had gathered on both sides of the US-Mexico border have left their makeshift camps, ending a standoff that had provoked a major border crisis for the Biden administration.

At Ciudad Acuna on the Mexican side, AFP saw migrants packing up their belongings and getting into vans taking them to a shelter, after a deal struck with the Mexican government.

Just hours beforehand the United States had announced that the last of the migrants who were camping illegally under a bridge on the Texas side of the border had either left or been removed.

"As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants at the camp underneath the Del Rio bridge," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at the White House.

Around 2,000 were flown to Haiti on 17 expulsion flights, Mayorkas said, while "others have been moved to processing facilities along the border." The Homeland Security chief said an estimated 8,000 had voluntarily returned across the border to Mexico, some 12,400 individuals will have their cases heard by an immigration judge, and another 5,000 are being processed to determine if they will be removed or not.