by Frank Holmes, reporter
Not only is the curve not flattening, government officials say, but it’s about to hit high tide and wash over the entire country.
They aren’t talking about the number of infections of the Wuhan flu — they’re talking about illegal immigration.
High-ranking officials in the federal government say the number of people crossing the border could reach “unprecedented” highs all thanks to the global pandemic.
“How do you measure the number of refugees that come out of that level of devastation?” a senior Trump administration official told Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner. “You can’t put a number on it, but it’s reasonable to say that it would be completely unprecedented.”
The virus, which has shut down the U.S. economy, has hit our southern neighbors hard, as well. “Private hospitals in five Mexican states and Mexico City are already at capacity due to the outbreak,” Reuters has reported.
One in three coronavirus patients found at a San Diego hospital had crossed the border.
“We are concerned about the large number of people coming across” from Mexico, the CEO of another southern California hospital said. “There are no health checks at all going in either direction.”
The problem isn’t just that coronavirus-positive illegal immigrants think they have a better chance in the U.S. healthcare system. It’s that Latin American economies could evaporate because of their leaders’ lockdown orders.
“Are we concerned about the economic impacts that this might have, which could lead to migration? Absolutely,” said U.S. Agency for International Development acting Administrator John Barsa. “If there is economic collapse in a given country, it is only natural that there will be migration flows to places where the economy is more robust.”
That would be the United States. Even with an unemployment rate not seen since the Great Depression, and a higher unemployment rate for immigrants than native-born U.S. citizens, the American economy is still stronger than Central America.
Already, the virus has eroded the region’s GDP so bad that multiple nations have sealed their own borders — temporarily slowing illegal immigration across the Southern border to a trickle.
All that will come to an end, Barsa said, unless U.S. taxpayers help rebuild Latin American economies, so that illegal immigrants can find jobs and live their lives in their own countries.
“Confronted with unprecedented violence and chaos in the region that we are directly tied to, do you try to wall yourself off from the region?” asked another unnamed, senior official.
But the Trump administration insists that the wall is another part of the answer — whether the Deep State likes it or not. Last week, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol was given a $275 million grant to build the next section of 30-foot-tall wall on the border near Laredo, Texas.
That’s a thumb in the eye to liberal Democrats, who tried to shut construction of the border barrier down cold.
Four Democrats wrote a letter to the White House last month, saying all money for the wall should be “redirected to the borderlands.”
“All federal resources being spent on the wall are desperately needed to fight the pandemic,” wrote Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and three other liberals, on April 8.
They ironically complained that unnecessary projects drained money away from COVID-19 — before they voted for a $3 trillion HEROES Act loaded with pork barrel spending.
Additionally, ending the building process would actually cost taxpayers money, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Illegal immigrants might also be drawn to the U.S. by promises of receiving “stimulus” checks, something demanded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
President Donald Trump has a different plan: He’s announced he will maintain high-target enforcement of border security.
Border agents have already apprehended two illegal aliens with the coronavirus, according to the CBP.
Even if the U.S. begins to reopen, the border crackdown will continue, since the virus may not have peaked in Mexico and Central America, said CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan.
Sealing the border has the support of the American people, reeling from the worst economy in decades and tiring of a three-decade tidal wave of illegal immigration.
This November’s election may determine whether we finish building the border Wall or see America bus in the largest wave of illegal immigration in history.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”