The fire chief in a Texas border community told Congress on Thursday that two-thirds of his department’s ambulance calls now deal with illegal immigration, and he’s had to dedicate one of his ambulances just to handling those emergencies.
Chief Manuel Mello III said making those runs costs his city of Eagle Pass as much as $18,000 a day, and it’s overwhelming the city’s hospital too, where the emergency room has just 18 beds. Some residents have had to wait in an ambulance for two hours until a bed frees up, and others never get an ambulance at all.
“Sometimes our residents are left without an ambulance service,” Chief Mello told the House Judiciary Committee.
Two thousand miles away in New York City, the schools have had to block some kids from preschool and can’t hire enough school safety officers as they deal with an influx of migrant children. The city has asked parents to volunteer instead to police the schools, said Danyela Souza Egorov, vice president of the Community Education Council for New York City School District 2.
She also said the crush of new students who don’t speak English is so large that the school system simply can’t hire enough English-language learning teachers.
Ms. Souza Egorov, a Brazilian immigrant herself, said she was particularly miffed that the migrant kids were being excused from vaccine mandates that other children are required to meet.
“I think legal immigrants like myself look at this process and ask why there is this double standard,” she said.
As the border continues to spiral out of control, the sheer number of people being caught and released is taking the immigration debate to places it’s never been before.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Border Patrol agents this week that 85% of unauthorized migrants at the border are being caught and released right now, overwhelming both the border communities and the places they end up.
Democrats during Thursday’s hearing didn’t counter the horror stories from the local officials, but said immigrants — and particularly illegal immigrants — contribute to the economy.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington Democrat, said illegal immigrants give back to the country through taxes. She said illegal immigrants who work pay $14.5 billion in payroll taxes to fund Social Security.
That funded 1% of Social Security’s spending last year.
Rep. Lou Correa, California Democrat, said illegal immigrants would also be willing to sign up for the military if they were allowed.
Democrats also said the U.S. economy needs the new workers, whatever their legal status. They said one solution is to speed up issuance of work permits to unauthorized migrants who’ve been caught and released, allowing them to join the economy — and presumably to stop needing as many government support services.
Ms. Souza Egorov, the Brazilian immigrant, offered a counterpoint. She said her husband is a Ukrainian immigrant, and his octogenarian parents fled their home and came to the U.S. under a new Homeland Security “parole” program only after serious vetting and proof of financial support.
And they only fled their home in Karkov after their street was bombed and their windows blown out, leaving them freezing in the Ukrainian winter.
She said those are the kinds of refugee cases that the U.S. immigration and asylum system should be aimed at. But she said in New York City, the data she’s seen shows that 80% of the migrants are single adults.
Chief Mello said his community is normally about 70,000 people, but lately it’s anywhere from 75,000 to 80,000 people on a given day, depending on how messy the border is at that time.
He said his department used to see eight to 12 drownings in the Rio Grande per year before 2020. There were 43 last year.
He recalled one horrific day when his ambulance was called out to the river for a 3-month-old whom Border Patrol agents had pulled out of the water and were performing CPR on. The infant was rushed to the local hospital then on to San Antonio, but died.
Several hours after that call came another call to the same spot on the river. The infant’s older brother had just been pulled out of the water and was already dead.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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