Mayorkas corrects the record, says migrant whipping incident ‘did not occur’
Haisten Willis
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The Department of Homeland Security‘s top brass set the record straight Thursday — the infamous migrant whipping incident did not occur.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined the White House press briefing to discuss immigration after Title 42 expires. A reporter then brought up the Haitian immigrant “whipping” controversy from September 2021.
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“The southern border is not just Mexicans,” began TheGrio’s April Ryan. “It is Haitians, it is Africans, as we’ve seen particularly with that issue with the Haitians being whipped with the reins on the horses. But what is there —”
Mayorkas then cut Ryan off.
“Let me just correct you right there,” he said. “Because, actually, the investigation concluded that the whipping did not occur.”
Ryan took umbrage with the correction, protesting that she had seen people being whipped “with something from the horse, reins from a horse.”
The pictures that were interpreted as DHS agents whipping immigrants set off nationwide outrage that reached deep into the Biden administration.
In the days after the incident, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both publicly denounced the agents.
“It was horrible what — to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did,” Biden said on Sept. 24, 2021. “Horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.”
Just one day later, Harris weighed in, saying on The View that the photos “invoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, it has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.”
Even then, the photographer who captured the incident said the photos were “misconstrued” and that he had not witnessed agents “whip” anyone.
DHS concluded the next July that the agents had been falsely accused, though they were still referred for discipline.
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Ryan apparently either had not seen the report or simply did not believe it, but Mayorkas was happy to inform her.
“I’m going to leave you as corrected,” he said.
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