Laredo sending busloads of migrants to Austin and Houston without testing for coronavirus
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McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) – Calling it a “public health crisis,” Laredo Mayor told Border Report Wednesday that his southern Texas city is sending busloads of migrants to Austin and Houston without testing them for coronavirus.
Laredo’s Mayor Pete Saenz
Laredo’s Mayor Pete Saenz said the city sends four charter buses a day with a total of 200 migrants sent to Laredo by border police from the Rio Grande Valley. The migrants, mostly all families, have been legally released by federal authorities to travel to the United States.
Migrants arrive at greyhound stations in Austin and Houston and are fitted with PPE and masks, but Saenz said he was unsure whether local NGOs in those cities test the migrants upon arrival. However, he said Laredo officials are notifying emergency management coordinators in Austin and Houston that the buses are on their way.
“These migrants are not being tested. Border Patrol doesn’t test them. We have much less the infrastructure for testing and quarantine. If you then test when they are positive, there is an obligation or obligation to quarantine, and that is expensive and the NGOs here on site do not really have these capacities, ”Saenz said.
These migrants are not tested. Border Patrol does not test them. “
Laredo’s Mayor Pete Saenz
The city of Laredo filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in July to stop the rendition of migrants from the RGV, citing an increase in migrants with coronavirus being sent to the area. The city also issued a disaster statement to prevent RGV migrants from entering the Laredo area. But the buses got on anyway.
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Saenz said this new agreement is a compromise the city made with DHS officials, and it includes hiring a charter bus company to transport the migrants to other cities.
With the city under an obligation to try to isolate migrants and help with quarantine, Saenz said they would not test them for coronavirus.
“We agreed that we would drop the lawsuit, which we did, and then Border Patrol would take these migrants, about 200 or so a day, to a municipal facility that we leased, and then us as a city “a bus company that transports these migrants further north here in Texas,” Saenz said.
Initially, the city sent migrants to Dallas, Austin, and Houston, but the cost to the city was too high, Saenz said, “so we decided to just focus on Austin and Houston.”
📣 COVID-19 update (8/09)
Breakdown of active cases:
• 242 cases are under 19 years of age
• 369 cases are between 20 and 49 years old
• 77 cases are over 50 years old
• 164 cases (76.3%) are not vaccinated
• 44 vaccine breakthrough cases throughout the yearhttps: //t.co/lRTPTCaTEV pic.twitter.com/Z5ofGtPIhz
– City of Laredo (@cityoflaredo) August 9, 2021
The buses cost Laredo $ 8,000 to $ 10,000 a day, Saenz said, and the city hopes to be reimbursed by FEMA.
Laredo firefighters facilitate the transfer of migrants in a storage area that Saenz calls the “little bus station,” where migrants receive snacks, porta pots and toiletries when they get off the DHS buses and on the Laredo charter buses to Austin Houston.
He said providing the buses is a necessity as Laredo has a “waiting list” for hospital beds and the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise. He said there were around 800 active cases on Wednesday, including a three-month-old migrant girl brought to Laredo by border police from RGV.
“We don’t even have a pediatric intensive care unit,” Saenz said. “The federal government can take them elsewhere. You have the choice. But we as residents really have no choice. We’re literally fighting for beds here when beds are available. So it really is a public health crisis. “
He said when the city filed the lawsuit on July 16, 35 to 40% of all migrants brought to Laredo by DHS officials from RGV tested positive for coronavirus. Now they don’t know what the percentage is because the city is no longer testing migrants.
But the infected migrants at the time quickly filled the Holdings Institute, the city’s only migrant shelter, forcing it to be quarantined and closed to newcomers. He said there were also no hotels in Laredo that would accept COVID-positive migrants. And he said Laredo does not have the opportunity to open a large park, which was recently done at RGV to isolate and test migrants.
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But what has really brought the city so far is the waiting list for hospital beds and the lack of nursing staff and doctors to care for the sick.
“We put a migrant against a resident who wants a bed, and when you have two sick people it is extremely uncomfortable to be in that situation. It is insensitive and cruel to get us into this situation because nobody wants to decide who gets a bed first, ”Saenz said.
Saenz said he has been invited and plans to attend Thursday’s round table in McAllen with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is coming to the South Texas border calling out local leaders to ask the Biden administration to look into the situation.
He said he hoped Mayorkas could bring up the dire situation.
“It is not manageable. It’s out of control. It’s chaos, ”he said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at Ssanchez@borderreport.com.
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