By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
On any given day, the Del Rio International Bridge is a conduit for twin-plant workers driving to and from their jobs, American tourists visiting Ciudad Acuña and Mexican shoppers on their way to Walmart.
On Saturday, the bridge’s function as a vital connector between two countries, two states and two cities was paused, and it was cast in an entirely novel role, as a sunshade over an ever-swelling sea of humanity.
At 7:25 p.m. Saturday, 14,650 persons who had crossed the Rio Grande illegally were packed into a refugee encampment under and around the international bridge, each person waiting to surrender himself or herself to Border Patrol agents in an attempt to seek asylum in the United States.
The encampment has burgeoned under the bridge over the course of the past week, from just over 2,000 immigrants on Monday to the 14,650 Saturday evening.
Little of the sprawling encampment is visible from the border fence on Frontera Road. To see it, you must pass through the gate and follow the dirt road from the fence toward the Rio Grande.
Closer to the bridge, there are numerous Border Patrol, National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles, as well as trucks with trailers hauling pallets of water and other amenities. There is a mobile command post and a trailer where first aid can be administered.
Just past the armed agents and soldiers is a simple, four-foot-high wire fence, and beyond the fence, thousands upon thousands of people are packed tightly together under the bridge proper.
Most of the migrants stand or sit, but some lie sleeping, their heads pillowed on backpacks or rolled-up clothing. Here, a woman tries to comfort a fussing baby; there, a man chats with a trio of comrades.
Beyond the shade offered by the wide deck of the bridge overhead, even more people. Seeking shelter from the relentless Texas sun and the late summer heat, they have cut stalks of carrizo cane and created makeshift lean-tos and ramadas using the cane and articles of clothing, plastic bags and flattened cardboard.
The encampment stretches from the international bridge to the fence delineating the city’s property on the downstream side of the bridge. As more migrants arrive, some have moved past the city’s fence to wait on the swath of federal property beyond.
This reporter was able to speak with one Haitian woman who has been traveling for two months. She said she came to the border from the Mexico state of Chiapas, adding the journey from the interior of Mexico to the Texas border took a week.
There is no security anymore in Haiti, she said. People are dying, being killed. She is afraid to walk on her street.
The woman said she is headed to Florida, where she has family.
For now, the people under the bridge are calm, and our hosts speculate the migrants are staying calm because every day, many migrants are loaded onto buses and driven away from the camp, moving everyone else in line a little closer to putting Del Rio behind them.
—
Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
