The surge in COVID-19 cases in Arizona and Texas is from illegal aliens who are spreading the potentially fatal Asiatic pathogen to U.S. border agents, and contrary to President Trump’s order immediate deportation in March, the agents are transferring the virus carriers to U.S. hospitals.
That unwelcome news is from Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, who also reported that Mexican illegals are jumping the border and flooding hospitals in California and elsewhere, knowing the hospitals won’t turn them away.
Yet the media is trying to hide the truth, Bensman disclosed in a second report, which means Americans can’t judge whether the public-policy decision to lock down the economy again because of a new virus spike is prudent. As well, those illegals are taking beds in hospitals that Americans might need.
Border agents have apprehended almost 75,000 illegals since March 1, when it became clear the country was facing a major pandemic.
Agents Speak
“Evidence continues to mount that spikes in Covid cases in U.S. border states are due to successive waves of infected people fleeing Mexico’s dysfunctional and overwhelmed hospitals to get American medical care at least as much, if not more than, to the re-opening of those states’ economies,” Bensman wrote last week. “This matters because officials in border states are beginning to base policy decisions for partial lock-downs on grounds that lifting them is what caused the spikes.”
Border agents told Bensman they must transport Central American illegals to hospitals along with Cubans, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, and others.
The media, Bensman explained, contend that most if not all the patients are returning Americans or green-card holders.
As well, he reported:
States appear to be transporting many to interior facilities to keep bed space free on the border as the influx continues, adding to the impression that these imported patients were infected inside the United States due to lifting lock-downs rather than in Mexico, where few social distancing measures were implemented.
The [New York] Times and now Reuters have reported that California, for instance, has been airlifting Covid patients from “saturated” border clinics to hospitals in the state’s interior.
Bensman also cited a nurse, speaking for a YouTube video, who said many of her patients speak Spanish only, and that “a lot of them are coming over the border and going to the hospital and they’re flying them from that hospital.”
Worse still, California is double-counting the cases, once at the border and again at the second hospital.
In Texas, Bensman reported, “where a spike is almost universally attributed to the lifting of economic lock-downs, the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations in trauma service areas along the Mexican border more than doubled to 886 of the state’s 3,711 hospitalizations in just the past week, according to state health data. It’s unclear how many more were transported to facilities in the Texas interior to free up beds along the border as the apparent influx from Mexico continues.”
In Arizona, where the Covid spike is also widely attributed to re-openings, positive new infections have skyrocketed over the past month along the border, to 12,032 of the state’s 54,586 cases reported this week. The border cities of Yuma and Nogales have become the state’s reddest hotspots, with positive Covid tests in Santa Cruz County tripling to 31 percent of tests since May (1,482 this week). In Yuma County, positive Covid cases have tripled from 1,289 to 4,591 just since June 1. Pima County was reporting 5,587 this week compared to 187 on June 1.
Yet at least in the case of Texas, “eight weeks into re-openings, Governor Greg Abbott ordered tightened outdoor gathering rules and other emergency rules on grounds of ‘rampant’ spread of Covid and a spike in ‘hospitalizations’ that did not reference the many hundreds being hospitalized in Texas border facilities.”
Mexican Nationals
Bensman has also reported that “much of the reporting” on the virus “entirely avoided saying who all of these patients are who are crossing in from Mexico.” And again, the media claim the infected are returning expatriates or green-card holders.
But three active-duty U.S. Border Patrol agents working the border in Texas, which along with Arizona and California is experiencing spikes in Covid-19 hospitalizations right now, tell me they are apprehending sick non-Mexican foreign nationals who had illegally entered along the Texas border and taking them to area hospitals per policy. That current policy requires immediate transport of reportedly sick migrants straight to the nearest care facility.
Under new emergency regulations to control the spread of Covid-19, Border Patrol officers are required to immediately return Mexican nationals to Mexico, sick or not.
That, Bensman reported, isn’t happening. If the border-jumping illegals claim to be sick, they go to a hospital, the agents told Bensman.
“It’s automatic,” an agent told me of the hospital transfers.
Mexico’s hospitals reportedly are overwhelmed, so “huge numbers of them (infected people in Mexico) are coming just to seek medical attention,” one agent told me, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Agents are getting exposed and testing positive.”
An unknown number, Bensman reported, are quarantined:
Another agent told me that, despite the push-back policy for Mexican citizens, some who crossed illegally and evade apprehension can still make their way to hospitals. These “getaways,” as agents call them, often know where the hospitals are and understand they will not be turned away.
Data from Texas show that 17.4 percent of tested patients — 439 of 2,518 — “were hospitalized patients in Texas were in five trauma service areas abutting the Mexican border,” Bensman reported.
And many who tested positive at the border are landing in Houston-area hospitals. That might explain why the intensive care unit at one of them, Texas Hospital Center, is at 100-percent capacity.
Between March 1 and May 30, agents collared 74,382 illegals who jumped the border with Mexico.
Question is, how many carry the COVID-19.
Photo: Md Baki Bullah / iStock / Getty Images Plus
