40,000 COVID-Infected Migrants Released into the U.S. as the Nation Braces for Next Wave of the Pandemic

New and more dangerous variants of the COVID virus threaten to send the nation back into some form of lockdown. But even as hospital wards are filling, and new restrictions on personal freedoms are being imposed, migrants carrying the virus and its vaccine-resistant variants are being released into the United States and settled in communities all across the country.

According to Mark Morgan, the former chief of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, some 40,000 COVID-positive migrants, who entered the country illegally, have been turned loose. Morgan is currently a Senior Fellow at FAIR. Morgan notes that many migrants who are apprehended at the border are not tested for COVID, and even some who test positive for the disease are released from custody anyway. Additionally, about one-third of the migrants in federal custody refuse to be vaccinated.

Many of those being released are unaccompanied minors, or families with minor children, who cannot be summarily returned to Mexico under Title 42. As such, these children are destined to wind up in schools all across the country, where children under the age of 12 cannot be vaccinated under CDC guidelines. In the immediate vicinity of the border in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Morgan reports that COVID cases have surged by 900 percent.

The open border also poses unnecessary hazards to frontline personnel who come in close contact with migrants. According to Morgan, 32 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have died of COVID and many more have become ill with the virus. The grave risk to CBP agents was acknowledged by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as he toured the border region in August. During that visit (in which he admitted that the administration’s policies were “unsustainable”), Mayorkas spoke about the possibility of providing them with hazardous duty pay resulting from their continued exposure to COVID-infected migrants.

Law enforcement, by its very nature, entails hazard to those doing the enforcement. However, in this case, the policies initiated by Mayorkas and the Biden administration have deliberately created additional hazards for CBP personnel and for unsuspecting citizens around the country. While the circumstances under which CBP agents are working merit hazardous duty pay, most would rather be spared the unnecessary risk that is being imposed upon them and their families by the Biden administration’s policies – as would citizens in the communities where the 40,000 infected migrants have been quietly released.