MIGRANT & COVSURGE
WH concedes dual problems
Thousands of illegal immigrants are being set free into the United States — and an increasing number of them are reportedly testing positive for the coronavirus before being released by Border Patrol.
As the crisis on the southern border continues to escalate, the White House on Monday admitted it isn’t doing enough to discourage people from seeking unlawful entry.
“I would say it’s clear we need to work more on getting the message out and being very clear: Now is not the time to come,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Migrants who were once held in Mexican border camps while their cases were being processed in the courts are now being allowed entry into the US as the Biden administration rolls back former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Felipe Romero, a spokesman for Brownsville, Texas, said 185 migrants rapid-tested at the city’s main bus station were infected with COVID-19, up from the 108 disclosed last week, Fox News reported on Monday.
Since Jan. 25, 1,553 people have been tested for coronavirus after crossing the US border there, Romero said.
He said there’s little that Brownsville can do to restrict the migrants from traveling beyond Texas other than to advise them to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety precautions and quarantine.
“The president of the United States, [Joe] Biden, helps the people because it’s necessary, you know,” “Mario,” a Honduran migrant who spent eight months at a camp with his family and is still awaiting entry to the US, told Fox.
Psaki reiterated the Biden administration’s claim that “the majority of people who come to the border are turned away.”
“Yes, we have changed the policies of the last administration as it relates to unaccompanied children, but the majority of families, adults, the vast, vast majority are turned away at the border. And that is a message that, clearly, we need to continue to look for means and ways of getting out more and more out to the region,” she said.
Her comments followed the revelation that under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security will convert two immigrant-family detention centers in south Texas into Ellis Island-style, rapid-processing facilities, and has already emptied a facility in Pennsylvania.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in a court filing last Friday that while families continue to be detained at its locations in Karnes City and Dilley, Texas, adults and children are all released within 72 hours.
Migrant families previously held at a third facility in Leesport, Pa., have all been released, according to the ICE disclosure made Friday.
Despite establishing multiple new tent-style shelters and loosening COVID-19 restrictions, the White House’s Domestic Policy Council is telling Biden that the administration will fall short of its needs by a couple of thousand.
The number of unaccompanied minors and families arriving at the border this year “are expected to be the highest numbers observed in over 20 years,” senior ICE official Russell Hott wrote in an e-mail to staffers on Thursday, according to The Washington Post.
Even as the two facilities in southern Texas are transformed into rapid-processing centers, that “may not be sufficient to keep pace with apprehensions,” Hott said in the e-mail.
Those who cannot be housed at those centers even for 72 hours will be transferred to nearby hotels.