The massive variety of sick and unvetted migrants getting into the nation has raised fears amongst Republican governors that the Biden administration’s dealing with of the disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border is propelling COVID-19 outbreaks.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican and ally to former President Donald Trump, issued an government order Wednesday to “reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure in Texas by reducing the transportation of migrants throughout [the] state,” following stories of a 900% enhance in sick migrants crossing the border via the Rio Grande Valley sector.
“The dramatic rise in illegal border crossings has additionally led to a dramatic rise in COVID-19 instances amongst illegal migrants who’ve made their manner into our state, and we should do extra to guard Texans from this virus and scale back the burden on our communities,” Abbott said on Wednesday.
The issue came to a head when migrants who tested positive for COVID-19 were placed in hotels in La Joya without local authorities’ knowledge.
TEXAS MIGRANT SHELTER SHUTS ITS DOORS, UNABLE TO KEEP UP WITH INFLUX OF MIGRANTS AND RISING COVID-19 CASES
“You have to understand that some of these places are so full, they don’t have anywhere else to put [the migrants], so they have to release them… They were released into our city, and no one told us,” La Joya, Texas police sergeant Manuel Casas said this week.
Catholic Charities started putting migrants up in hotels in the area, such as the Texas Inn & Suites in La Joya, Casas said. At first, the hotels did not station security guards to ensure that migrants did not leave the premises, and three of them did. A mother and her two daughters, who both looked sick but had not been tested for COVID-19 yet, went to a nearby burger joint next to the hotel without wearing masks, making employees uneasy. That is when the workers flagged down local police passing by, who stopped to investigate the situation and found that sick people had been staying in the adjacent hotel.
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“We don’t have a number [for how many migrants in the hotel have tested positive for COVID-19], and we do not have a way of verifying if they are positive for [COVID-19]. It’s just their word,” Casas said. “We do know that the people the officer encountered showed signs [of infection] that we look for… it’s alarming, so we do have reason to believe that it’s true that they are positive.”
A nurse with the charity regularly monitors those migrants staying in the hotel, including some who have tested positive for COVID-19 or are at least visibly ill, twice a day. People staying there temporarily also cannot leave the property but are still receiving necessary medical care, according to an employee at the hotel.
The situation at the border has deteriorated to the extent that existing processes for managing the entry of illegal immigrants have broken down. The Catholic Charities respite center in downtown McAllen, Texas, buckled under the weight of record numbers of migrants crossing through this week. The center, where migrants released from federal custody are normally allowed to wait as they make travel plans to their final destinations across the country, had to close temporarily.
Other Republicans have sounded the alarm.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, including the rumblings that it will revoke the Title 42 policy implemented in March 2020, which gave the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authority to halt border crossings into the U.S. because of the threat of introducing communicable diseases into the U.S. The policy has blocked migrants from seeking asylum at the border since the start of the pandemic.
“It’s outrageous that the Biden-Harris administration is considering lifting Title 42 border COVID-19 restrictions on ILLEGAL immigration,” Ducey said last week. “Ending Title 42 will threaten the health and safety of Arizonans and all Americans. Our already broken border will explode — overwhelming border patrol, law enforcement, nonprofits, and health care professionals.”
Meanwhile, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican whose state has fully vaccinated less than half of its population, said on Tuesday that the recent spike in COVID-19 cases was linked to an influx of migrants coming from countries where vaccines are scarce.
”Part of the issue is the southern border is open, and we’ve bought 88 nations that are coming throughout the border, they usually don’t have vaccines, so none of them are vaccinated, they usually’re getting dispersed all through the nation,” Reynolds stated.
Still, public well being officers stated that the specter of migrants transmitting COVID-19 to Americans is small in comparison with the hazard posed by lagging vaccination charges within the U.S. In Texas, about 51% of individuals have acquired not less than one dose of the vaccine, whereas lower than 44% have been absolutely vaccinated, in response to a tracker maintained by Bloomberg. A barely bigger share of Arizonans has been absolutely vaccinated — about 45% — whereas lower than 50% of Iowans have accomplished a vaccine routine.
The variety of migrants getting into the U.S. illegally has skyrocketed not too long ago. A complete of 330,000 migrants have been encountered within the Rio Grande Valley alone over the previous 10 months, up 478% from the identical time final 12 months. Approximately 190,000 folks tried to cross the southern border illegally from Mexico in June alone, the very best quantity in about 21 years. The variety of sick migrants crossing into the U.S. truly represents only a fraction of the record-breaking totals. In reality, the 900% enhance in sick migrants getting into the U.S. within the first two weeks of July quantities to only 135 folks.
“To overblow the situation as in that’s the main driver of a COVID surge is probably an overstatement… Texas has relatively low vaccination rates,” stated Dr. Marcia Ory, Director of the Center for Population Health & Aging on the Texas A&M School of Public Health. “We don’t want to blame… the surge on migrants versus recognizing that Texans need to do their part by getting vaccinated.”
IN JUST TWO WEEKS, 135 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TEST POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 AT RIO GRANDE VALLEY BORDER
The Biden administration was anticipated to carry the Title 42 restriction on border crossings this summer season, however officers shelved these plans regardless of stress from immigration rights advocates to repeal it, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Administration officers maintained that Border Patrol brokers have taken applicable precautions after they apprehend asylum-seekers.
“CBP provides migrants with PPE from the moment they are taken into custody, and migrants are required to keep masks on at all times,” a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson advised the Washington Examiner. “If anyone exhibits signs of illness in CBP custody, they are referred to local health systems for appropriate testing, diagnosis, and treatment. CBP takes its responsibility to prevent the spread of communicable diseases very seriously.”
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Tags: Healthcare, News, Coronavirus, Immigration, Biden Administration, Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey, Border Crisis, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection
Original Author: Cassidy Morrison
Original Location: Surge raises suspicions migrants are propelling COVID-19 outbreaks
