None of the migrants being packed into overcrowded detention facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border are tested for COVID-19 until they are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services, and that poses a serious health concern when they’re released from custody, Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, said Wednesday.
“HHS is testing them and they’re getting numbers anywhere from 5% to 10% of the ones they test,” Jackson said on Fox Business’ “Mornings With Maria.” “They don’t test everybody, but 5% to 10% of the ones they test, test positive for coronavirus. That’s a huge number when you consider we have 150,000 plus people crossing the border every day.”
When people leave the Border Patrol’s detention facilities, they get on buses and head to the HHS facilities, so as they’re not being tested first, they’re interacting with several people on the way to their destinations, added Jackson, former White House physician under then-President Donald Trump.
“I think that we’ve done a great job, especially in the state of Texas, on really taking a turn on COVID here,” Jackson said. “We worked really hard over the last year with social distancing and mask wearing and all the other things we’ve been asked to do so we can get to a position in our state here where we can stop wearing our masks, where we can go back to school, go back to work.”
But the crisis at the border is about to undermine all of that, Jackson said.
“These people are going to go to communities all over my state, all over the state of Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to communities all over the country. So I think everyone in the country should be very concerned about what’s going on on our southern border.”
Jackson, who recently visited the border with other Republicans, said he saw a “complete travesty” during his tour.
“We saw people in these small little plastic bubbles or cages that were literally laying so close to each other, you couldn’t see the floor between them,” Jackson said. “If you put one more person in there, you would be stacking people on top of people. It was completely packed. There were 250 people supposed to be in the facility, they had 4,600 people packed in there.”
He added that the “cages made out of plastic” reminded him of “incubators, in light of what’s going on with the pandemic. It really is a humanitarian crisis down there.”
Jackson added Border Patrol is overwhelmed with the number of migrants who are crossing the border. All the agents who are supposed to be protecting the public from criminals are not able to do that because they are at detention facilities and ports of entry dealing with migrants, including masses of children, and are “passing out juice boxes, changing diapers, and doing things that have nothing to do with law enforcement and the protection of the American people,” he said.
Source: Newmax
