A Texas border town has been forced to set up a tent city for the thousands of migrants who have crossed the southern border and tested positive for the coronavirus.
NEW: An emergency tent compound is being built in Anzalduas Park in Mission, TX to house COVID positive migrants who have been released from federal custody. It was previously set up in McAllen, but it was moved to this location overnight. Press conference upcoming. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/D0sTHtZgRX
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) August 5, 2021
City officials in Mission, Texas, set up several tents on county property in a park on Wednesday because the community has run out of places to house them.
The town is a few miles from McAllen, which has become a central hub for processing illegals and transporting them to various parts of the US interior.
The Biden administration acknowledged this week that it had moved thousands of COVID-positive illegals to the area.
Migrants put up in the tent city will be expected to stay there and quarantine for two weeks, officials said.
A religious nonprofit, Catholic Charities, has been providing housing for migrants in McAllen, but the group ran out of space at its shelter earlier this week.
The space is only supposed to hold 1,236 people, but more than 2,000 migrants were seeking admission every day.
The move is intended to prevent COVID-positive migrants from infecting McAllen residents following a recent incident in which a COVID-positive migrant family ate at a fast-food restaurant in nearby La Joya, Texas.
La Joya officials said the migrant family was released into the town without any warning from federal officers.
“We did not know this,” La Joya police Sgt. Manuel Casas said during a press conference this week, according to Fox News.
“No one told the city of La Joya,” he said. “No one told the police department that these people were here and no one told us that these people were possibly ill.”
One of the county’s commissioners, Everardo Villarreal, blasted the Biden administration for forcing McAllen officials to come up with a solution to the migrant crisis on their own.
“This is a federal issue,” he said. “These immigrants are here based on the laws of our nation, legally seeking asylum. And it’s the federal government’s responsibility to care for them.”
