Volunteers left at risk of COVID

DEL RIO, Texas — US Customs and Border Protection has released around 2,000 illegal immigrants into this tiny town in west Texas over the last several weeks without at least ensuring they had a COVID-19 test, The Post has learned.

“I don’t think people realize that the volunteers who have been here from the beginning were taking a risk on behalf of their community in order to assist with this issue,” Tiffany Burrow, the director of operations at Del Rio’s Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, said Tuesday.

“Del Rio has fallen under the radar repeatedly. Not just in 2019 but also in 2021 as well,” she went on, referencing the last migrant surge to rock the southern border.

The volunteer-run center is the only buffer point migrants have between US Border Patrol and their next stop.

Since February, they’ve received just over 2,000 migrants — 464 in February and already 1,700 so far in March, Burrow said. Each day, between 100 to 150 migrants are dropped off at the center where volunteers provide food, clothing, some limited necessities and help booking a bus or a plane out of town.

However, before Friday, migrants were getting dropped off without a COVID-19 test and then brought to a bus station or airport to continue their journey, which is directly against all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

“You have this whole administration whose major line item on their platform is a hard stance on COVID-19 and you have this humongous gap in that policy,” Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano, a Democrat, railed to The Post. “I don’t think it’s my city’s responsibility to test these migrants, I think it’s the federal government’s responsibility.

“They’re forcing it down our throats.”