The surge of migrants coming into the United States has become a game of political maneuvering from both Democrats and Republicans—Democrats blame the Trump administration for the current situation, and Republicans blame the Biden administration for being too “soft” on certain immigration matters.
I’m not even going to begin to sort out where the truth lies on the border situation as a whole. However, what is clear is that there is a crisis when it comes to COIVID at the border.
Certain elements of this crisis are the results of issues that go well beyond the United States-Mexico border. The bulk of the migrants are coming from countries in Central America—namely, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—that had extreme levels of violence and poverty to begin with, and then got slammed by two devastating hurricanes last fall.[1] To say that the situation appears to involve a lot of desperate people fleeing desperate situations might sound like an oversimplification of the current situation, but that is what this situation appears to be the result of—people, many of whom are desperate, fleeing from desperate situations.
That being said, some of the crisis could have been avoided with a more competent response from the Biden administration.
Among the “lowlights” of the administration’s handling of COVID among migrants include:
- A March 18th article from POLITICO said that Biden administration officials admitted that there was no centralized system for tracking or responding to COVID cases among the migrants.[2]
- A more recent NBC article said that migrant children are not tested for COVID until they transfer to a facility run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services.[3]
- The Biden administration outsourced testing and quarantining for many migrants. As a result of this outsourcing, it was “unclear how many have been tested for the virus, how many have tested positive and where infected people are being isolated along the border.”[4]
In reading these pieces, what became evident is that we’ve had two administrations violate the three basic principles involved in handling COVID, when it comes to migrants: testing, tracing, and isolating.
The fact that we are over one year into this pandemic, yet still do not have a competent way of dealing with COVID among migrants is, in my opinion, almost incomprehensibly careless and dangerous from a public health standpoint. Even if you were to believe the Biden administration’s argument that they inherited a mess (and based on the way Trump often handled the pandemic, I would not be the least bit surprised if Biden did inherit a mess), the administration’s response has been woefully short of following the science many on that team say they want to follow.
Because of the lack of a centralized, organized, and competent system for preventing as well as dealing with COVID among migrants, we get situations where COVID-positive migrant children are transferred from one facility to another[5] and where some COVID-positive migrants are still allowed to continue with their journey in spite of the positive test.[6] In other words, this failure by the current administration in grappling with COVID concerns at the border has resulted in preventable spread of the virus.
We can debate about the ultimate fates of the people at the border, and there will be debate about what should be the ultimate fates of people at the border; however, one area that should not be ignored during this public health crisis is the need for preventing COVID spread among migrants, and from migrants to others. Given that COVID is a global disease, the United States not doing all it can to prevent spread of the virus among migrants at the United States–Mexico border is a global headache, even if migrants are sent back to where they came from.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55699540
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/18/biden-administration-covid-southern-border-tracking-477073
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/cbp-not-testing-migrant-children-covid-border-stations-though-many-n1262059
[4] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/18/biden-administration-covid-southern-border-tracking-477073
[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/cbp-not-testing-migrant-children-covid-border-stations-though-many-n1262059
[6] https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/san-antonio/news/2021/03/20/positive-covid-19-tests-continue-to-climb-among-migrants-in-brownsville
Blind Injustice 
It is very frustrating when most people are doing what they need to and our Governments still can’t get it together.
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I agree, that is very frustrating indeed.
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I think that this stems from both a lack of priorities, or putting the priority on people rather than money, and also from a lack of investment in our public health system for decades, and a refusal to see every single person as worthy of health care. And as worthy of caring for.
Back to my belief that we must keep building tools for both empathy and critical thinking, together, and we must teach others to build on what has come before and to keep signal boosting the tools in creation, and our Kinder World-building Toolbox.
I’m glad, Brendan, that you are here working with us to build and put tools into everyone’s hands.
Stay safe, and keep building,
-Shira
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I think you made some good points here Shira. I think all three things you raise here–lack of priority on people, lack of investment in public health, and lack of belief that certain people (like migrants) are worth caring for are all factors. And as such, what I talk about in my post is a symptom of this problem, albeit a potentially deadly symptom.
Much more empathy and critical thinking is indeed needed, and hopefully this post helps on both fronts.
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