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The government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrant children with latent tuberculosis infections into American communities without assurances of treatment.
Nearly 2,500 children with latent infections were released into 44 states over the past year, according to a court-ordered report on how the Health and Human Services Department is treating the children.
About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children.
The government says it can’t treat the children because they are in custody for a short time and treatment requires three to nine months. HHS releases infected children to sponsors and notifies local health authorities in the hope that they can arrange for treatment before the latent infection becomes active.
Those hopes are often dashed.
Local health officials say the notifications are infrequent and the child has often already arrived when they are told about a case in their jurisdiction.
“We do not know how often the sponsors follow through on treatment,” the Virginia Department of Health told The Washington Times in a statement. “By the time outreach takes place, the child has sometimes moved to another area or state.”
The Times reached out to HHS for this report.
The children in the department’s custody, known in government-speak as unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, are a particularly tricky population.
Under the law, Homeland Security must discharge most children quickly and send them to HHS. The department holds the children in government-contracted shelters while searching for sponsors to take in the children caught at the border without parents.
The system is fraught with problems, including crowded shelters and struggles to find capable and conscientious sponsors. In thousands of cases, the government quickly loses track of the children. --->READ MORE HERE
More than two dozen migrants who entered the United States and were diagnosed with tuberculosis before being returned to Mexico and other countries last year remain unaccounted for.
According to information released by Mexico’s Health Secretary, a total of 74 migrants were diagnosed with tuberculosis, and most of them sought follow-up medical care south of the border. But 25 of them remain unaccounted for and their whereabouts are unknown.
TB primarily attacks the lungs but it can also infect the kidneys, the spine and the brain. It can be fatal and easily spreads.
Patients, including the migrants, are supposed to be monitored for at least six months, according to the U.S. National Institute of Health.
Both the U.S. and Mexico share health data related to infectious diseases along the border such as tuberculosis and COVID-19.
Of the 74 cases last year, 62 of the diagnosed migrants were sent back to Mexico and others were referred to Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru. --->READ MORE HERE
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