It has often been said, in particular by critics of border closures and travel restrictions during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, that \u201cviruses don\u2019t respect borders.\u201d While there may be some validity to that assertion, in the most literal sense, it is difficult to deny that closing borders and limiting travel plays a role in limiting virus spread. After all, it keeps carriers, or potential carriers, from spreading the contagion by traveling or crossing the frontiers of other nations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real problem emerges when border closures and travel bans are half-measures riddled with numerous loopholes and exceptions \u2013 which both undermines the effectiveness of closing borders and restricting travel, and allows the open-borders crowd to claim that such measures don\u2019t really work. A case in point may be evidence suggesting that Mexico\u2019s coronavirus peak<\/a> is spilling over into counties on the U.S. side of the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Trump administration restricted<\/a> all \u201cnon-essential\u201d traffic \u2013 including tourism and recreational travel \u2013 along the U.S.-Mexico border as of March 21, commerce and other traffic deemed essential continued. However, U.S. citizens (including dual ones), permanent legal residents (i.e. \u201cgreen card\u201d holders), and \u201ccertain other travelers\u201d \u2013 including those seeking medical care \u2013 were exempted<\/a> from the ban. While that might have made sense from a legal, economic, and even humanitarian perspective, it made less sense from a public health one. These exceptions created loopholes that the coronavirus could \u2013 and did \u2013 exploit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although a few media outlets<\/a> have written about the spike in COVID-19 cases in border counties along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, a series<\/a> of articles written over the past month by Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review <\/em>is perhaps the most enlightening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Horowitz argues<\/a>, \u201cthe [corona]virus seems to have come to western Mexico first in Baja California (south of California), then migrated east to Sonora (south of Arizona) in May and then to Tamaulipas (south of Texas) in June.\u201d This trend, according to Horowitz, was consistent with both spikes in border apprehensions and sharp increases in California, Arizona, and Texas border county COVID-19 cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He further points out<\/a> that (as of July 19), in the case of Texas, for example, border counties accounted for 42 percent of the state\u2019s reported COVID-19 deaths \u2013 in spite of constituting only 9 percent of Texas\u2019 population and having much less population density than the counties closer to major cities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How coronavirus-infected individuals seeking medical help on the U.S. side of the border contributed to community spread is at this point unknown. The possibility of infecting others while being transported the nearest hospital may be minimal, but there is always a chance for nosocomial (i.e. hospital) spread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What we do know is that when a coronavirus patient arrives from Mexico and dies in a U.S. hospital, his\/her death increases hospitalization and death statistics in the border counties (and states). And then there are the large numbers of people traveling back and forth between the two countries, at least some of whom may have brought in COVID-19 \u201csilently.\u201d This makes the potential for spreading this highly contagious disease greater than if cross-border traffic was more restricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Had the reopening of Texas, which occurred on May 1, been\nprimarily responsible for the coronavirus surge \u2013 as the mainstream media has\nclaimed \u2013 then surely the more densely-populated urban areas would have been\nhit harder than the border counties, Horowitz argues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Hidalgo County, Texas (the McAllen area), for example<\/a>. There \u201cdeaths actually went down<\/a> to near zero from mid-May to mid-June \u2013 right during the window you would typically see those deaths occur, had the reopening played a role.\u201d However, \u201cthe surge in deaths beginning in late June coincides with the peaking of deaths in Mexico, particularly in Tamaulipas, right during the beginning of June, which perfectly jives with the 21-day average infection-to-death duration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hospital administrators in Texas, especially in the border\narea, admit that they are being inundated with many patients from Mexico. For\ninstance, Horowitz quotes Dr. Ivonne Lopez, medical director of McAllen\nHospital Group at McAllen Medical Center, who stated that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n “One of the factors is the border, we in McAllen Medical are receiving many patients from Mexico, they are coming in because their resources over there are also limited so they are coming into our area seeking medical attention and by law we have to provide it. The patients that cross the border say \u2018we don\u2019t have hospital space over there, the oxygen is gone, we don\u2019t have medications so we cross the border,\u2019 that\u2019s the situation in the border.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Are these patients U.S. citizens, dual citizens, green card holders, or illegal aliens? We do not know for sure, mainly because, as Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) points out<\/a>, \u201cno one will ask or say where the patients originated or even attempt to break things down.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, a registered nurse from southern California stated<\/a> in a YouTube interview that \u201ca lot of them are Spanish-speaking only. What I do know is what my patients said, a lot of them are coming over the border and going to the hospital and they\u2019re flying them from that hospital.\u201d No doubt the situation is similar in southern Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is more, the travel restrictions at the southern border are being enforced in a rather lax manner. Nor were border crossers subject to proper medical screening. One anonymous veteran southwest Texas customs officer told Horowitz\u2019s Conservative Review, <\/em><\/a>“At the inception of the nonessential travel ban, CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] officers have been told by management that it is none of their business if the travelers are traveling for essential purposes and if they are wearing proper [Personal Protective Equipment].”<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHundreds of Mexicans cross daily claiming their travel is considered as trade and commerce because they simply provide a typed letter of employment with a fancy letterhead and a Mexican-made employment identification card. CBP officers have had no formal training about such Mexican documents other than the Mexican passport,\u201d the agent told Horowitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He continued, \u201cCBP officers suspect many of these letters of employment and employment identification cards are fraudulent, but management continues to allow them to enter without the proper vetting. As a result, traffic has increased drastically since the nonessential travel ban.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n