SAN ANTONIO – For Gavin Rogers, a pastor with Travis Park Church, having watched thousands of Haitians last month in Del Rio, brought to mind the 2018 caravan he joined when Central Americans were heading to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“In so many ways, it’s very similar,” Rogers said.
He said migrants have been fleeing their home countries for decades.
“These people are experiencing extreme, extreme situations,” Rogers said. “They have no other choice but to do what’s best for their family or their children or their lives.”
Be it political unrest, violence, poverty, climate change, natural disasters, Rogers said, “There could be a host of reasons why certain people decide to seek migration and immigration into the United States of America.”
The foreign minister of Panama, Erika Mouynes, has alerted the U.S. government that as many as 60,000 mostly Haitians could be heading to the border.
“I’m not surprised. I wish I were,” Rogers said.
Kimiya Factory, executive director of the Black Freedom Factory, said what the nation saw in Del Rio last month was a warning.
As it stands now, Factory said immigration “is not sufficient or sustainable for the future of immigration.”
She said the crisis ahead should be “eye-opening.”
“We have to better come together, not only at the grassroots level but at the political-administrative level to tackle what is going on,” Factory said.
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