Axios reporter: Traffickers are using Biden's immigration policies to encourage migrants to cross into US

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Swan: Traffickers using Biden's immigration policies to encourage migrants to 'come on up' to Border

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan reacts to Haitian migrant crisis on 'Fox News Sunday'

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan said on this week's "FOX News Sunday" panel that drug traffickers and cartels are utilizing the Biden administration's open-door immigration policies to persuade more immigrants to cross the border into the United States.

Swan accused Biden's poor immigration strategy for the "unprecedented" influx of Haitian migrants who've made their way across the U.S. Southern Border and into Del Rio, Texas last week.

"When you overlay a global pandemic with, in Haiti, the earthquake and the assassination of the leader, the economic crisis in the region – and it’s only getting worse….some of it is inducement from the Biden administration’s policies and traffickers using that to message people in the region ‘come on up, come on up,’" Swan said.

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Nearly 16,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, were camped out under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, last month. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at the time that up to 30,000 people were encountered in Del Rio since Sept. 9 and that as many as 15,000 were concentrated there at one time. 

Approximately 12,400 individuals were reportedly released into the U.S. and are expected to have their cases heard by an immigration judge to decide whether they will be allowed to remain in the U.S.

Another 8,000 have chosen to return to Mexico, while an estimated 5,000 migrants are being processed by DHS, which will determine whether they will be deported or placed in an immigration processing center, Mayorkas said. 

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Swan said that because the scale of the crisis has become "so massive," the solution must be a "regional" one. 

"There’s obviously going to be enforcement from the U.S. side," he told host Chris Wallace, "but they're going to have to get cooperation from others in the region because the scale of the problem has become so massive."