Shelters in towns along the southern border are isolating illegal migrants who test positive for COVID-19. You would think this is not a controversial measure to take to protect the residents of these towns. This is not the case, though. If the migrants complain and wish to leave the shelter provided for them, they are free to go. Local officials cannot force them to stay because they have been released by DHS and are free to move around.

Take, for instance, a tent city set up in Anzalduas Park along the banks of the Rio Grande River, south of Mission, Texas. At first, one tent was set up to separate those who test positive from those who test negative. It makes sense that with the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, caution is taken to isolate those who may infect others. Families were moved into the tent if one member tested positive. The tents were put up last Thursday to hold an overflow of migrant families which continues to rise. They are legally released by DHS to the shelters where they are tested for COVID-19. City officials in McAllen were concerned about the spread of the virus in town.

The tents are designed to hold 260 people. They can expand to hold up to 650 people. Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, along with the City of McAllen, and Hidalgo County is overseeing the tents. The tents were moved from their original location in north McAllen when residents complained. The migrants aren’t all staying inside the tents, though. Some are sleeping outside. Those who are complaining about their accommodations and want to leave cannot be forced to stay.

Video taken on Monday by a volunteer and supplied to Border Report shows large groups of migrants lying on cots and blankets outside on the grass in the 96-acre park. The volunteer, who wished to remain anonymous, said many of the migrants said they wanted to leave and did not like being close together inside the tents.

But if the migrants want to leave this remote park outpost, city officials say they can’t make them stay.

“If they’re not COVID-negative I know they’re trying to discourage that (leaving) but we really don’t have that (ability) — not the city, not the county, law enforcement or Catholic Charities — have any legal authority to hold them,” McAllen spokeswoman Xochitl Mora told Border Report on Monday.

“You can’t keep someone locked up, you can’t force somebody not to leave a locale and so we’re doing the best we can with that,” McAllen City Manager Roel “Roy” Rodriguez said Thursday during a news conference at the park where they announced they had moved the pop-up shelter.

When migrants first arrive at Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center in downtown McAllen, they are tested for COVID-19. This means that DHS is releasing COVID-19 positive migrants along with those who are COVID-19 negative. Migrant advocates with La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) held “a chain of protection to welcome immigrants” on Monday. across from the testing facility. The group blames “alarmist rhetoric” for “dehumanizing” the migrants for spreading COVID-19.

“We feel there has been alarmist rhetoric around this issue where it’s really de-humanizing people and it’s really dividing people. We’re calling to action our moral responsibility, not only us but our local elected officials, state officials, our federal officials to inject moral language into this discourse. The discourse we’re having right now is frankly dividing people on this issue,” Danny Diaz, LUPE director of organizing, told Border Report.

“We’re talking about humanity. People’s rights under the law,” Diaz said. “The rhetoric and the narrative that migrants are to blame for COVID-19 when in reality we know there’s a lot of failures of responsibility from the governor all the way from the top down. The last thing we need to do is blame migrants because we have an ugly history of blaming migrants and the poor.”

Mr. Diaz blaming the governor and other officials for this problem is interesting. Governor Abbott and border town officials are doing all they can to keep communities safe, which is their job. There is a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus spreading across Texas and other states so it is only common sense to test migrants and then act accordingly. No one is solely blaming migrants for the spread of COVID but to deny that they contribute to the problem is ridiculous.

A shelter in Mission, Texas is closed now due to one infected migrant woman in the facility.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, which since February has offered to house an increasing number of asylum-seeking migrants released by federal officials, is temporarily closed, parish priest Father Roy Snipes told Border Report. The infected migrant woman was at the facility on Aug. 4, triggering an immediate shutdown and evaluation of procedures at the church, where donkeys and dogs and goats have helped to entertain the migrant children and families.

Now some of the migrant families are being bussed to the Family Transfer Center in north Houston, near George Bush Intercontinental Airport. They are given three hot meals, clothing, and toiletries, and help with travel plans. Hopefully, this is a temporary solution. The Biden border crisis continues to grow, though, so it likely won’t be.

This is a big uptick in intakes for the Houston center, which has so far in August taken in 1,000 migrants, compared to 683 in all of July, Villarreal said. The Houston facility only accepts migrants who have tested negative for coronavirus, and Villarreal says they administer additional tests there to be certain.

The overnight migrant facility at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church is expected to reopen on Monday, said Albert Solis, who works for Snipes and oversees the care of the migrants. Typically, the church helps about 300 families every night.

Solis told Border Report on Tuesday that in the meantime, staff and volunteers are all reviewing and increasing their COVID-19 protocols and screening measures, and they are adding shower facilities for when the migrants return. He added that no staff or volunteers have come down with the sickness.

“All of us tested negative and none of us have symptoms and we were already disinfecting every day as the groups that come and as soon as they leave we go in there and disinfect everything but now we’re kind of upping it a little more,” Solis said.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is scheduled to visit the RGV on Thursday. It will be his first visit since May 7. Do we think he’ll tour any of the tent city locations? Will he finally admit what a horrendous crisis the policies of the Biden administration have created? The Biden border crisis is much more than a humanitarian crisis. There is a public health crisis, too. Illegal migrants may not be the sole cause of a spike in cases but they contribute to it. Allowing them to freely move wherever they wish to go isn’t going to help.