A top House Democrat who represents a southern border district said the United States might be a matter of days away from a disaster if current migration rates continue and the Biden administration does not take immediate action.
“We are weeks, maybe even days, away from a crisis on the southern border. Inaction is simply not an option,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a centrist Democrat whose Texas district runs along 200 miles of the border in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo. “Our country is currently unprepared to handle a surge in migrants in the middle of the pandemic. Migrants are illegally crossing, potentially exposing border communities to the coronavirus and putting us at risk.”
Border Patrol, the federal law enforcement office that arrests migrants who illegally cross the border between ports of entry, is not testing or vaccinating the thousands of people it is encountering. Just this week, Cuellar revealed that 108 people who had been released by Border Patrol in nearby Brownsville, Texas, tested positive for the coronavirus. They were tested by local nonprofit organizations that received tests from local cities and towns.
Border Patrol divides the 2,000-mile southern boundary with Mexico into nine regions. For the past decade, agents in the Rio Grande Valley have encountered more people attempting to sneak into the U.S. than the other eight regions. It is the most southern part of the border, making it approximately 1,000 miles closer for migrants traveling from Central America than going to San Diego, California.
In the Rio Grande Valley, agents have apprehended approximately 10,000 people over the past week, 2,500 of whom were encountered over the past two days.
Cuellar said that the Biden administration needs to listen and work with border community leaders who are experiencing the fallout of decisions made in Washington.
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In February, more than 50 House Republicans accused President Biden of treating the U.S.-Mexico border as a “political game” for implementing softer immigration policies as apprehensions of illegal immigrants tick up to “crisis” levels, and they called on him to present a plan for how to respond to the growing number of people coming to the border.
