Texas troopers create “steel wall” of patrol vehicles in Del Rio as feds continue to repatriate Haitians

DEL RIO — As immigration agents continue to fly more of the thousands of migrants camped in this border city to other processing centers or back to their home countries, state troopers have created a miles-long “steel wall” of patrol vehicles to discourage more people from crossing the Rio Grande into an encampment under the Del Rio international bridge.

As many as 15,000 migrants, many of them Haitian, have crossed the river seeking asylum in recent days, but on Tuesday morning that number had shrunk to an estimated 6,200 camping under the bridge, according to Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez.

It’s unclear how officials are deciding which migrants are being allowed to request asylum and which are being flown back to their countries of origin, but at a charter bus stop at a gas station here, many of the migrants who were let into the country while their asylum claims are pending were families with small children and pregnant women.