A Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, Chris Cabrera, has warned that Border Patrol officers are having to release illegal border crossers who tested positive for Covid-19 into the U.S. “day in, and day out,” spurring worries for the health and safety of Border Patrol and the nation as a whole.
Cabrera stated:
Not everyone we encounter we test, only those that exhibit some type of symptoms, and not everybody has symptoms that have it. And we’re releasing people out of the door day in and day out with actual positive tests for COVID and more keep popping up.
Cabrera also warned that his border sector alone has seen 20,000 apprehensions with 2,000-3,000 every day just in just the single sector, not including those aliens who evade the overwhelmed Border Patrol altogether.
As a result, Cabrera stated that a number of agents have been quarantined or are sick with the virus.
We have a lot of agents quarantined right now, which adds to our problem, on top of agents who are sick with COVID, so we’re concerned about catching it ourselves, we’re concerned about our families and coworkers, and it just seems everyone's turning a blind eye to it when we have a real situation down here, Cabrera added.
More than 188,000 aliens were encountered this past June, taking the number of migrants encountered this fiscal year to well over one million. Congressman Chip Roy released a thread of Tweets today detailing the preliminary border statistics from July, noting that there were over 200,000 encounters with illegal aliens just last month. The numbers, if accurate, would be the largest total ever recorded by DHS.
Chris Cabrera warned that Border Patrol agents are struggling with the crisis, which shows only increases in encounters at the border each month. This is despite the historical norm of illegal land migration dropping off during the sweltering summer months as the southwest desert becomes too inhospitable to cross. Cabrera concluded:
Manpower is very low, we’re stretched very thin and it's difficult when the administration doesn’t care what's going on down here.
