Mayorkas admitted that the federal government had released migrants without testing them.
During yesterday’s hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that the federal government had released migrants without testing them for COVID-19, and in that in one situation in Brownsville, Texas, earlier this month, migrants who tested positive for coronavirus were released and merely urged to quarantine.
Representative Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia, began by noting that all international travelers entering or reentering the U.S. are required to demonstrate that they have tested negative within the past three days to enter the country, and contended that DHS was enforcing a more lenient standard for those entering illegally than for American citizens returning to the country.
Clyde asked, “Can you assure the American people that no one who has been apprehended is released into our communities with the — that still test positive for COVID-19?”
Mayorkas replied, “Congressman, let me be clear. There were times earlier when individuals were apprehended and we sought to expel them, and we were unable to expel them, and we were compelled to release them, and we did not have the opportunity to address them. We have addressed that situation.”
Clyde continued his questioning, seemingly unconvinced by Mayorkas’s answer suggesting the matter had been resolved. “Since the Biden administration took office, thousands of people have been released into the border communities. According to media reporting, since January 25th, 2021, at least 108 migrants tested positive for COVID-19 after being released into Brownsville, Texas, community where they proceeded to travel to cities across the United States. The mayor of Yuma, Arizona said migrants are not being tested for COVID-19 before being released into his community, despite assertions made by the administration. . . . Is it the federal government’s job to enforce the laws and not burden states with a public safety crisis resulting from federal policies?
(Background on the Brownsville cases can be found here, background on the Yuma situation can be found here.)
Mayorkas answered:
Congressman, it is our responsibility to enforce federal law. And the situations of which you spoke are precisely the situations that I provided in my answer to your prior question. There were instances in which individuals were released. And you mentioned Brownsville and that is an example of that. In Yuma, Arizona, we didn’t have the relationship with community-based organizations. They did not have the same footprint, and it is precisely why we built the additional practices to which I referred earlier this morning, why we’ve built different practices to plug any hole to ensure that our policy, to the best of our abilities, our policy that everyone is tested and quarantined as needed, and that is what we have done. What we do is we address a challenge, and if we see an element of that challenge that we are not addressing, then we know what we must do, and we do it. And that is precisely what we have done here and across the board in addressing the migration of individuals at our Southwest border.”
The city of Brownsville is doing COVID-19 testing at the bus station with test kits provided by the state. Earlier this month, the local NBC affiliate reported that out of 1,700 migrants tested at the Brownsville Bus Station, more than 100 tested positive.