Texas activists say migrants are not to blame for spike in COVID-19 cases
MCALLEN, Texas — Hundreds of Central American asylum seekers awaited coronavirus test results under tents in a park on the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande last week.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection vans dropped migrants they had detained and cleared for release at the site for testing. All were tested, including babies. Some would test negative and leave later that day to join relatives in Arkansas, Florida or North Carolina. But 27 would test positive and remain quarantined in a fenced-off area of the park — temporarily at least.
Local COVID-19 vaccination rates exceed the state average, but COVID-19 infection rates and hospitalizations have jumped this summer, leading some to blame asylum seekers amid a historic surge in migration.
“People are concerned, and rightfully so,” said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, during a visit to the park Thursday. “They shouldn’t be afraid these families are here. If anything, we’re trying to keep them safe from COVID.”
Texas remains a patchwork of pandemic hot spots, largely because only 47% of Texans are vaccinated. Unvaccinated people are straining hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units statewide, doctors say. During the last two weeks, average daily hospitalizations increased 22% statewide to 14,411, more than any other state except Florida.
But of 1.4 million residents in the Rio Grande Valley, more than half were vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. In McAllen’s Hidalgo County, 57% of residents were vaccinated, a higher rate than the national average. Many in the tightknit, largely Latino border communities were driven to get vaccinated after losing a loved one during the last year, when the COVID-19 death toll in the Rio Grande Valley reached 4,754, higher than all of the state’s major counties except Harris County, which contains Houston.
Yet COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased across the Rio Grande Valley this summer, leaving hospitals unable to hire nurses fast enough to keep all of their beds open. During the last two weeks in Hidalgo County — where McAllen is the largest city — COVID-19 hospitalizations increased 12% and more than 100 people have died of the virus.
Pimentel and city officials opened the Anzalduas Park testing site in
July after public outcry erupted over migrants being released by the Border Patrol without testing. At first, the site was seeing 2,000 migrants a day. Migration had reached a 21-year high, with 212,672 people taken into custody, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued several executive orders aimed at curbing migration, saying migrants posed a public health risk.
“The dramatic rise in unlawful border crossings has also led to a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases among unlawful migrants who have made their way into our state, and we must do more to protect Texans from this virus and reduce the burden on our communities,” Abbott said in a statement before he tested positive for the coronavirus himself.
Police in the Rio Grande Valley town of La Joya, Texas, issued a widely viewed public health advisory July 26 about a coronavirus-positive migrant family who were released by the Border Patrol to a local hotel and were seen eating at a local Whataburger. The advisory alarmed local officials, who called on the federal government to stop releasing coronavirus-positive migrants.
Pimentel dismissed the advisory as “misinformation,” saying that only the father had entered the Whataburger, masked, and that he ate outside with his family.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to await the outcome of their U.S. immigration cases south of the border — but it’s not clear how that might affect the release of coronavirus-positive migrants inside the U.S. The Biden administration had already extended a Trump pandemic health order that allowed the Border Patrol to send most asylum seekers back to Mexico, with the exception of some families and unaccompanied youths.
“The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face. It is complicated, changing and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said last month when he visited the Rio Grande Valley to tour the park quarantine site with Pimentel and meet with local officials.
Mayorkas acknowledged that migrants were increasingly testing positive, but rejected claims that they were boosting infection rates on the border.
“The rate of positivity is at or lower than the rates in our local border communities,” Mayorkas said.