Officials in McAllen, a border city in Texas, declared a local disaster last week as the city continues to struggle due to thousands of COVID-positive illegal immigrants being released into the city by border patrol.
According to Fox News, more than 7,000 COVID-positive immigrants have been released into McAllen since February. 1,500 of those were added in the last seven days.
The “overwhelming number of immigrants stranded in McAllen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection” has forced McAllen to construct temporary emergency shelters in order to manage the surge in undocumented migrants, the city said in a statement reported by Fox News.
“Despite the City of McAllen and its community partners’ best efforts, the sheer number of immigrants being released into the city has become a crisis: a crisis the City of McAllen did not create and has proactively tried to avoid for seven years,” the city said.
City officials warned that the “shockingly large number of immigrants” dropped off by U.S. Customs and Border Protection “increases the threat of COVID spread or other lawlessness within the city,” the Washington Examiner reported.
“Faced with a rapidly escalating surge of immigrants at the Texas-Mexico Border, the City of McAllen’s Emergency Management Office, in coordination with City Management and in accordance with the Mayor’s Declaration of Local Disaster executed on August 2, 2021, took swift action to begin its efforts to mitigate emergent health and safety risks,” the city revealed.
Shockingly, the Biden Administration is reportedly not requiring illegal immigrants to be tested for COVID-19 before they are released into the U.S. and allowed to travel from state to state.
“They aren’t tested at encounter. [Unaccompanied children] and family units are moved out of custody quickly. If they are infected and do not have obvious symptoms, they are sent out,” a senior Customs and Border Protection official told the Washington Examiner.
National Border Patrol Council spokesman Chris Cabrera confirmed that the “majority of people in Border Patrol custody are not tested.”
However, concerned officials in other Texas communities are calling on border patrol to stop releasing COVID-positive migrants into the U.S., according to The Dallas Morning News.
Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez wrote on Twitter, “I am calling on our federal immigration officials to stop releasing these migrants into our communities.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, slammed Joe Biden on Fox News claiming he is “playing politics with the pandemic.”
“Joe Biden and the Democrats hate red states like Texas and Florida that we reopened, our economy is booming, [we] let our kids go back to school, let small businesses open up. There’s a reason people are fleeing the blue states and coming to the red states because we protect people’s freedoms,” said Cruz. “Joe Biden is trying to play politics with the pandemic even while he releases COVID-positive immigrants by the thousands into the state of Texas.”