OPINION:
One of the main concerns when Joe Biden was elected president was that he was going to open the southern border. There was good reason to worry about that considering the Obama/Biden disastrous immigration policies.
But this time was different, we heard some people say. There’s no way the Biden administration would dare to reverse former President Trump’s success at controlling the border because, hey, we’re fighting off a pandemic. The last thing anyone would do would be to open the southern border, that’s just crazy talk.
Apparently, not so crazy because that’s exactly what’s happening.
The Trump immigration and border policies could not have come at a better time considering the arrival of the China virus. Prior to this deadly viral pandemic delivered up by China, Trump policies were mitigating the steady stream of disease and viruses brought into this country by immigrants trying to cross the border.
In 2019, Reuters reported, when undocumented immigrants were found at the border to be infected with everything ranging from mumps, tuberculosis, chicken pox and influenza, among other contagions, they were quarantined and often removed. It appears even that precaution has been abandoned.
Along with the Biden administration essentially erasing the southern border, we have now learned that for the thousands who are once again rushing into the country, only a few are tested for COVID-19, and for those who test positive, we shrug, and they continue their journey into the interior of our country.
“Many of the asylum seekers reached nearby Brownsville, Texas, where local officials said Monday there’s a growing number of infected migrants and nothing being done to enforce quarantines. As of Saturday, 185 of 1,553 migrants tested at the Brownsville central bus station since Jan. 26 had tested positive for the virus, city spokesman Felipe Romero told Fox News,” and reported by the New York Post.
Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner tells us: “Border Patrol and ICE are not testing anyone taken in custody. Border Patrol has been increasingly releasing people from its custody because ICE does not have room to accept transfers. Migrants who are released rely on Greyhound and other bus companies to travel to their final destinations in the United States.”
This catastrophe is the result of electing a man who had run for president condemning Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and pledging to solve the crisis and crush the pandemic. Instead, he has set into motion the actual importation of people with the coronavirus who are then allowed to go on their way with no controls, and no plan for mitigation.
Moreover, according to senior ICE official Russell Hott, unaccompanied minors and families “are expected to be the highest numbers observed in over 20 years,” reported The Washington Post.
The Biden administration has absolutely no plan and no real interest in securing the border or in keeping COVID-19 from coming into the country. Right now, you cannot take a flight into the United States, even if you’re a citizen, without a negative COVID test. But you can walk across the border without any confirmation of your health status.
One of the main methods used by undocumented migrants to disappear into our nation is via bus. Even people who have tested positive at the bus terminal in Brownsville are not presented with any direction or restrictions about their movement. Most of those people then board a bus for, in many instances, cross-country trips confined with a multitude of other people, for hours if not days.
NBC News reported on one young woman who tested positive for COVID-19, and her plans: “Eva Orellana, 29, who is from Honduras and who tested positive, said she was going to take the bus to North Carolina with her 3-year-old daughter. ‘On the way, we were wearing a mask all the time, gel, washing our hands,’ she said. ‘Really, I don’t feel anything.’ Those who tested positive and spoke to Telemundo did not have any document indicating their Covid-19 test results; they said they were simply told by the station workers after taking the test.”
While politicians continue to dilly-dally, over at Independent Women’s Voice (iwv.org), of which I am president, we are acting on a variety of issues to make a difference, including having a petition for you to sign demanding that the Biden administration applies all travel health requirements and COVID screening procedures to everyone equally and fairly, including those at the border.
If you are refused entry to this country through an airport unless you can produce a negative COVID-19 test, at the very least we must have that same standard at every point of entry, no matter who is trying to enter our country.
This is about keeping you, your family and community safe. But it is also about not abandoning those to serious and sometimes deadly health risks who have already risked so much coming to this country. They then disappear into migrant communities across the country subjecting those underserved communities to even more risk and devastation.
• Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s Voice, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk-show host.
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