Biden has re-instituted a pre-Trump border policy that is often referred to as “Catch and Release”. This refers to the practice of giving asylum seeker and illegal immigrants a court date, then releasing them into the US with a promise that they will come back on their court date.
The problem now is not that a significant number of these people will not come back on their court dates, but that we are still in the midst of a pandemic.
Republicans have introduced a Bill (the REACT Act) which would would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test all migrants that illegally arrived in the U.S. before releasing them, and only releasing those that test negative.
Democrats blocked the Bill.
Representative Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) went as far as to claim Republicans were stoking fear and anger toward immigrants and fueling xenophobia. “You know, the whole immigrants-bringing-diseases-into-our-country kind of thing,”
According to NBC News, Miriam Izaguirre, a 35-year-old asylum-seeker from Honduras took a rapid test for Covid-19 at the bus station in Brownsville Texas just a few hours after being released. They told her her test came out positive just before she got on a bus to Houston.
NBC spoke to other migrant families who also said they had tested positive while waiting for buses to other destinations such as North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey.
Apparently the city of Brownsville administers these rapid tests at the bus station, after migrant families are released by the Border Patrol. They said so far 108 migrants (6.3% of those tested) have tested positive for Covid-19.
Strange, isn’t it? That while Democrats continue to insist on mask mandates, occupancy limits, and social distancing, would refuse to test immigrants caught crossing the border illegally for COVID-19?
Now for some perspective.
Currently if an American citizen travels to Mexico, for whatever reason, they are required to have proof of a negative COVID test taken no more than three days prior to their return to the US in order to be allowed to re-enter the US.
Why is it ok to require an American citizen to have a negative test to re-enter the US, but xenophobic to require the same for an immigrant to enter the US?