Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Mark Morgan says the nearly one million illegal aliens apprehended at the United States-Mexico border since October 2020 have not been vaccinated for the Chinese coronavirus.
Following reports this week that President Joe Biden may end the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Title 42 order — a critical border control that has kept nearly 650,000 border crossers out of the U.S. — on July 31, Morgan said in a statement that the order is necessary to continue protecting public health as vaccinations among border crossers are slim-to-none.
“Unfortunately, foolhardiness also appears to be just as contagious for this administration,” Morgan, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement:
Make no mistake, the Biden administration is purposefully making it harder for federal law enforcement and immigration officials to do their jobs and expel those who come here illegally. Sadly, this politically motivated action will not just push already sky-high border crossing numbers to the breaking point. [Emphasis added]
It will also needlessly endanger the health and well-being of American citizens throughout the country as they will be exposed to increased numbers of illegal aliens potentially carrying COVID. The public health conditions of the migrants trekking through Central and South America are appalling. Few to none of the nearly 1 million illegal aliens apprehended have been vaccinated, and there is little effective health infrastructure along the route to help prevent spread of the virus. [Emphasis added]
Title 42 has been an effective mitigation tool to reduce the further spread of COVID into the U.S. and has saved countless America lives. With another stroke of a politically motivated pen, this administration is putting the well-being of illegal aliens over the lives of America citizens. [Emphasis added]
Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement that Biden’s reported efforts to end Title 42 would be “both reckless and foolish.”
“As the U.S. continues to climb out of this crisis, we need to ensure, now more than ever, that we do not intentionally introduce new COVID cases into the country,” Wolf said:
Regardless of our progress defeating COVID, we know that the vaccination rate and public health infrastructure in Mexico and Central America is significantly lacking. This is dangerous to all Americans, especially agents on the front lines. Removing Title 42 will also be yet another signal from this administration that the border is open and another reason for illegal migrants to enter the country illegally. It would be unfathomable that the administration would proactively take a step to make this crisis worse. [Emphasis added]
In October 2020, seven months after former President Donald Trump’s first implemented Title 42, about 91 percent of border crossers apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border were being removed using the border control.
Today, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is only using Title 42 in about 64 percent of border crosser cases — a roughly 30 percent drop.
For months, Democrats and the open borders lobby have been urging Biden to end Title 42. In a letter to top DHS officials in February, House Democrats said the administration ought to release into the U.S. border crossers who would otherwise be expelled under Title 42 to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Central America.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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