Up to 50 percent of illegals have covid, sheriffs say

FPI / March 21, 2021

As much as half of the illegal immigrants flooding the U.S. southern border are testing positive for the coronavirus, the National Sheriffs Association said.

“In any other construct, infection rates that high would be cause for alarm by public health officials. Yet, we are currently engaging in policies that have potentially opened, rather than restricted, undocumented traffic into the U.S.,” the sheriffs said in a statement.

Several reports have noted that Joe Biden's team is allowing covid-infected immigrants to board buses and travel to destinations throughout the Untied States.

Earlier this month, the CEO of Greyhound bus company sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding that all illegal immigrants released by DHS show proof that they are covid-free before boarding buses. There are no reports of Mayorkas responding to the letter.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Thursday that if Mayorkas can’t change policies to solve the border situation he needs to find a new job.

Graham said Team Biden “has lost control of the border” and Mayorkas “doesn’t have either the will or capability to fix the problem.”

“It is time for DHS Secretary Mayorkas to change course or change jobs,” Graham said in a statement. He said only “immediate and drastic change” can head off a worsening situation.

Mayorkas, in testimony Wednesday to a House committee, admitted his department released illegal immigrants into communities without testing them for the coronavirus.

Team Biden has reversed many of former President Donald Trump’s border policies, put in place after the 2019 migrant surge, which helped alleviate the problem.

“We are already seeing strains to the public health system of border communities,” the sheriffs said. “The suspension of deportations has led to the release of undocumented persons into border communities. We then have an affirmative responsibility to provide medical care for them if they are infected with covid.”

In February, Border Patrol apprehended over 100,000 illegal immigrants at the southern border, and about 26,000 evaded capture, according to Jaeson Jones, a former Texas Department of Public Safety captain who received the provisional Border Patrol data from internal sources, which was reviewed by The Epoch Times.

“This at a time when our communities are already grappling with this public health emergency and desperately trying to roll out the vaccines. We now face a serious potential public health crisis along the border,” the sheriffs said.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) requires all international travelers entering the U.S. — including U.S. citizens — to have proof of a negative covid test prior to boarding a flight for the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said in an interview that there is an “active conversation with the CDC” about expanding the policy to domestic flights.

Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, noted that: "No such caution is being applied to those entering our country illegally on the southern border. Thanks to the Biden administration’s reboot of the Obama-era catch-and-release policy, those apprehended crossing the border are held in quarantine for 10-14 days with no Covid-19 test required for their release into the U.S."

Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, noted in an op-ed for the New York Post: "Team Biden continues to apply the brakes on American life returning to normalcy. Government virus-guru Anthony Fauci has warned that this is no time to relax. Biden accused the governor of Texas of 'Neanderthal thinking' for ending the Lone Star state’s mask mandate. And the CDC warns Americans 'to avoid all travel' to Guatemala and other Central-American countries — even as the government invites migrants from those same countries into our homeland."

McCaughey added: "Why is this happening? Radical open-borders advocacy groups have taken over the White House, and they get what they demand, no matter how extreme. Instead of working with Congress and hearing out open-borders opponents, Biden issues executive orders, shutting out any debate."

Free Press International