A picture by photographer Paul Ratje showed the agent on horseback grabbing one of the migrants as the man tried to cross into the United States from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, on Sunday, September 19.

Ratje said many of the Haitians were crossing the river back and forth to get food for their families and were blocked by the horses. Commenting on one of the photos, he said;

“Some of the migrants started running to try to get around the horsemen, and one of the agents grabbed the Haitian in the picture by the shirt and he ended up swinging him around while the horse trotted in a circle.”

The El Paso Times reported the agent had swung his whip and charged his horse at people trying to cross, shouting, “Let’s go! Get out now! Back to Mexico!”

A Reuters report from the same area described a law enforcement officer using a lariat and whipping it close to the face of a migrant. It’s unclear if it was the same agent.

Pictures widely shared on social media also showed the border patrol agents using their reins against the migrants and pushing them back towards the Rio Grande in Texas. This invoked memories of slave-catching patrols chasing their human quarry (patrols that laid the foundation for modern American law enforcement) and 19th-century scenes of the violence of slavery in the United States.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki described the viral photos as “horrific,” but declined to say what consequences there should be for the agent’s actions.

She told reporters at the daily White House briefing “I have seen some of the footage. I don’t have the full context. I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate, but I don’t have additional details. I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it’s acceptable or appropriate.”

In a statement on Monday night, the Department of Homeland Security said the agency “does not tolerate the abuse of migrants in our custody and we take these allegations very seriously.”

The statement also revealed that the Custom and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility “is investigating the matter and has alerted the DHS Office of Inspector General.”

When asked about the photos while visiting Del Rio, Texas, where more than 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants have converged on a border bridge, Head of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the reporter who asked him about the whip was “assuming the facts,” and suggested it was possible the agent was simply holding a long rein. The migrant surge has become a crisis for President Joe Biden’s administration. Speaking in Del Rio, Mayorkas said Haitian migrants were receiving fake information about being able to stay in the United States.

He said the government would step up repatriation flights for the Haitians, and that US authorities considered it safe to send them back.

The Homeland security head said “To ensure control of the horse, long reins are used but we are going to investigate the facts to ensure that the situation is as we understand it to be and if it’s anything different, we will respond accordingly.”

Mayorkas was also supported by Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who defended his agency’s use of horses, saying they “play an integral part in the security response.”

Ortiz said, “We do not know who are the smugglers or who are the migrants, so it’s important that those border patrol agents maintain a level of security for both themselves and for the migrant population as they were trafficking back and forth.”

The camp under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande has become the latest flashpoint for U.S. authorities seeking to stem a flow of migrants fleeing gang violence, extreme poverty and natural disasters in their home countries.

The camp was a temporary home to more than 12,000 migrants, though Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the number reached as high as 16,000 on Saturday. Many had travelled from as far south as Chile, hoping to apply for asylum in the United States.

Iran’s foreign minister and the White House both announced that Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Wang was exchanged for scientist Massoud Soleimani.

Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, accompanied the Iranian scientist to Switzerland to make the exchange and will return with Wang, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The swap took place in Zurich and Hook and Wang are now en route to Landstuhl in Germany where Wang will be examined by doctors, the official said. Hook is expected to return to the U.S. from Germany alone, as Wang is expected to be evaluated for several days.

“After more than three years of being held a prisoner in Iran, Xiyue Wang is returning to the United States,” President Trump said in a statement released by the White House on Saturday. “The highest priority of the United States is the safety and well-being of its citizens. Freeing Americans held captive is of vital importance to my Administration, and we will continue to work hard to bring home all our citizens wrongfully held captive overseas.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that Wang was on his way back to the United States, where he will soon be reunited with his wife and son.

“The United States will not rest until we bring every American detained in Iran and around the world back home to their loved ones,” he said in a statement.

Harris campaign officials confirmed to Fox News on Friday that all field staffers in the state have left the campaign and that only a “handful” of staff remains. The added that three field offices – in Keene, Nashua, and Portsmouth — have been shuttered. They said the state headquarters – in Manchester – will remain open with a small staff.

The move comes two days after top national officials for the senator from California announced they were restructuring and redeploying staffers from their headquarters in Baltimore and some of the early-voting states to Iowa, which kicks off the primary and caucus presidential nominating calendar. The campaign has been hemorrhaging money, spending more than what was coming in.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California, at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention, in Manchester, N.H. on Sept. 7

The Harris campaign also confirmed to Fox News that the candidate canceled next week’s two-day swing through New Hampshire, when Harris was scheduled to head to the State House in Concord and file in person to place her name on the primary ballot. The campaign said Harris will now file to place her name on the ballot by mail. White House contenders almost always show up in person to file.

In a statement, the campaign noted that “Senator Harris and this team set out with one goal — to win the nomination and defeat Donald Trump in 2020. To do so, the campaign has made a strategic decision to realign resources to go all in on Iowa, resulting in office closures and staff realignments and reductions in New Hampshire.”

Harris told Fox News in February, during her first visit to the state since launching her campaign a month earlier, that “I intend to spend a lot of time here and I intend to compete for the votes here.”

But at the White House, Donald Trump said that there was “no doubt about it” that the Boxer had brought down the unmanned aircraft.

United States officials said that the warship took action to defend itself Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz after multiple calls to stand down were ignored.

“No doubt about it. We shot it down,” Trump said.

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said: “There is no question this was an Iranian drone, and the USS Boxer took it out as the president announced yesterday because it posed a threat to the ship and its crew. It’s entirely the right thing to do.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed the video shows the drone filming the Boxer before returning to base without damage.

The Iran armed forces branch said in a statement that forces continue to carefully monitor all movements of foreigners — especially “the terrorist forces” of the United States and the U.K. in the strait and the Persian Gulf.

Iran had “not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a tweet.

U.S. officials said that the Boxer jammed the drone’s signal, causing it to crash.

Electronic jamming breaks the data links between a drone and its controller on the ground. Such a move requires a vehicle-mounted, counter-drone device on the flight deck of the ship — a device that’s visible in official photographs of the Boxer shared by the Pentagon after the incident.

On June 20, Iran shot down an American drone in the same waterway, and Donald Trump came close to retaliating but called off an airstrike at the last moment.

Donald Trump refused to answer, however, questions from reporters over whether he would face the prince over the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi, which has sparked backlash from human rights and free-press advocates, as well as United States lawmakers.

In a statement, the White House said that the two leaders discussed a myriad of issues, including oil markets, Saudi Arabia’s role in ensuring stability in the Middle East and Iran, the Hill reported. Some lawmakers have called on Trump to disavow Saudi leadership since Khashoggi’s death last year.

A whole lot of people have accused the crown prince of directing the murder of the U.S.-based Saudi journalist over his criticisms of the kingdom. Khashoggi’s life was taken and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October. He had gone to the building to building to obtain certification of his divorce so he could marry his girlfriend, Hatice Cengiz, who waited outside for him.

Saudi Arabia has outrightly denied party to the killing. Many have accused the Middle Eastern kingdom of undermining Turkish effort to investigate the journalist’s death.

A UN expert on extrajudicial killings called for an international investigation into the death on Wednesday. Donald Trump has cited strong economic ties between the two nations whenever asked to rebuke Saudi leadership.

Last week, the Senate voted to stop an $8 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump has said he will use his veto power to move the measure forward. In addition to praising the crown prince on Friday, Donald Trump also touted the country’s recent moves in modernization, such as overturning a ban on women driving and reopening movie theaters after more than three decades.

The prince is “a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening Saudi Arabia,” he said as the meeting began, adding “It’s like a revolution in a very positive way.”

Kim was greeted by US President Trump on arrival and later took the stage to announce a ride-share partnership where ex-prisoners are given gift cards so that they can travel to and from interviews.

Kim said: “Everyone wants the community to be safe, and the more opportunity we have and that they have and the support that we help give them, the safer everyone will be.”