The National Sheriffs’ Association is sounding a warning about multiple dangers to the U.S. that exist right now at the southern border—and the group is noting in particular that up to 50 percent of illegal immigrants are testing positive for COVID-19.
That’s according to a draft border security resolution that’s set for a vote at the group’s Arizona meeting in late June.
The group’s board of directors discussed the threat posed by the latest migrant surge—and approved a “detailed warning call to the president,” according to The Washington Examiner.
Related: Biden Warned of 117,000 Migrant Kids Who May Cross Our Border This Year
On the subject of the coronavirus, the sheriffs said in their resolution, “Estimates are that between 5 percent and 50 percent of the persons crossing without documentation are COVID positive. In any other construct, infection rates that high would be cause for alarm by public health officials. Yet, we are currently engaging in policies that have potentially opened, rather than restricted, undocumented traffic into the U.S.”
The group added, “We are already seeing strains to the public health system of border communities. The suspension of deportations [by the Biden administration] has led to the release of undocumented persons into border communities. We then have an affirmative responsibility to provide medical care for them if they are infected with COVID. This at a time when our communities are already grappling with this public health emergency and desperately trying to roll out the vaccines.”
The sheriffs said further, “We now face a serious potential public health crisis along the border.”
The two-page resolution from the sheriffs was shared with The Washington Examiner and is included here.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki finally admitted to reporters that the “challenge” at the border is now indeed a “crisis,” as many people have been saying for some time.
Psaki used the term on Thursday during a press briefing. She said the Biden administration has now agreed to send 2.5 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to Mexico—without any expectation that Mexico help out with border security.
“There have been expectations set—outside of and unrelated to any vaccine doses or request for them—that they would be partners in dealing with the crisis on the border,” Psaki told reporters.
Psaki had refused previously to use the term “crisis” to describe the dire conditions at the border as a huge surge of individuals have shown up; these people have said they’ve arrived because of Biden’s open-arms welcome to them during the presidential campaign.
However, in that same press conference, Psaki soon after “appeared to edit her phraseology to ‘challenges on the border,’ and indicated that her use of ‘crisis on the border’ did not reflect any change in the administration’s view of the situation,” as Just The News pointed out.
Tens of thousands of migrants have rushed to the border in recent weeks “as President Biden relaxed strict immigration policies put in place by his predecessor,” The New York Post reported, “and appeared to send a more welcoming message to desperate foreigners in search of a better life.”
Related: Trump Says Biden Has Already ‘Failed’ as President
Biden, however—now that there’s a crisis during his administration—is trying to convey to migrants not to make the journey to the border.
More than 13,000 young migrants are being held in U.S. custody for an average of 120 hours, CBS Evening News reported on Tuesday night. That’s well beyond the legal requirements.
And this past Tuesday, new Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that the number of attempted crossings at the southern border is expected to reach its highest level in two decades.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) earlier this week led a congressional delegation to the border to see the situation firsthand—and decried the crisis that’s resulted from “a change in presidential policy [at] midnight [on] January 20th,” when Biden took office. “We sat and talked to a family from Honduras and asked them how long they’ve been trekking [to the border],” McCarthy told NBC News. They said they’d been traveling for 22 days, McCarthy said. Why? Because they’d heard that Biden had indicated this was the time to come to the U.S.
“The security of our nation and our border is first and foremost the responsibility of our president,” McCarthy said during a media briefing. “I came down here because I heard of the crisis. It’s more than a crisis—this is human heartbreak. There’s no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”
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Maureen Mackey is a writer, editor, web content executive, and regular contributor to Christian News Journal.