Here is the article you linked above. It only let me read it so far then it blocked me unless I subscribed which I’m not going to do. This didn’t help your argument at all.
Why Border Patrol Refuses to Offer Flu Shots to Migrants
Several doctors were arrested during a protest this week after they were refused permission to administer free flu vaccines to migrants.
Doctors and other health care providers asked this week to give flu shots to migrants at a Border Patrol facility in San Ysidro, Calif.
Doctors and other health care providers asked this week to give flu shots to migrants at a Border Patrol facility in San Ysidro, Calif.Credit…K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune
Miriam Jordan
By Miriam Jordan
Dec. 11, 2019
LOS ANGELES — Since last December, three migrant children have died from influenza in facilities along the southwestern border, where migrants routinely complain that cold temperatures sicken children, and where physicians have reported that crowded conditions spread illnesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concerned that infectious respiratory illnesses were spreading in congested border facilities, this year recommended flu vaccinations “at the earliest point of entry” for migrants who are 6 months or older.
But Customs and Border Protection officials have refused to put a vaccination program into effect, arguing that most migrants spend less than 72 hours in Border Patrol facilities.
The controversy came to a flash point this week, when about 20 medical professionals hauling coolers with flu vaccines showed up at a migrant detention center near San Diego, announcing their plan to inoculate everyone inside the facility who consented.
The physicians and nurses, members of a new health-focused immigrant-rights organization, were told to return the next day for a meeting with border officials, only to hear that they would not be allowed to provide the free shots.
“Of course Border Patrol isn’t going to let a random group of radical political activists show up and start injecting people with drugs,” the Department of Homeland Security’s press secretary said on Twitter.
Trying to provide flu shots to everyone during the few days they spend in Border Patrol custody does not make sense, officials said, because those who go on to be held in longer-term detention facilities routinely receive vaccinations.
The border agency, which invited the C.D.C. to inspect its facilities about a year ago, said it had significantly expanded its medical programs, with more than 250 health care employees now working along the border.
“To try and layer a comprehensive vaccinations system onto that would be logistically very challenging for a number of reasons,” the agency said in a statement. “The system and process for implementing vaccines — including vaccine supply chains, quality control, documentation, informed consent — are already in place at other steps in the immigration process as appropriate.”
Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is responsible for longer-term detention of migrants in the United States, said the agency had an annual mass flu vaccination program. Children are offered vaccines “appropriate for their age,” and adults are offered varicella vaccinations as needed to avoid chickenpox.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees long-term shelters for migrant children, said it also provided vaccinations, including flu shots, according to federal guidelines.
But doctors who are urging the agency to provide flu shots at the border note that many migrants who arrive there are not being sent to the long-term detention facilities in the United States where the vaccinations are provided. Under the Trump administration’s new, more restrictive policies, thousands are being sent back to Mexico, where many wait in teeming, unhealthy border camps.
And many — including Border Patrol agents — have complained about the risk of disease transmission in crowded border facilities. Many migrants are ill when they are apprehended, or become ill shortly after arriving at Border Patrol processing facilities.
Christopher Cabrera, a vice president of the local union of Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley, the Border Patrol’s busiest region, spoke in an interview in April about the disease and illness in the building.
“The majority of our agents get sick,” said Mr. Cabrera, who has been a Border Patrol agent for 17 years. “Infectious disease is everywhere. There’s always scabies in there. Usually we have chickenpox. We have tuberculosis in there. You name it, it’s probably been through that building.”
Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, Democratic of Connecticut, said it was “unconscionable” that Customs and Border Protection remained opposed to vaccinating migrants in its custody.
“Public health officials at the C.D.C. gave guidance and recommendations to Customs and Border Protection officials regarding flu season,” said Ms. DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Health and Human Services. “Yet recent reports indicate that C.B.P. officials are unlikely to vaccinate children and families at the border to safeguard them and others from influenza.”
The C.D.C. sent three teams at the beginning of the year to examine Border Patrol detention facilities in El Paso and Yuma, Ariz., with a special focus on respiratory infections.
In a 27-page report, which was reviewed by The New York Times, the C.D.C. advised giving vaccinations as soon as possible to newly arrived migrants, one of a series of recommendations that led to the recent increase in health care workers.
Since last year, several medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have raised an alarm over medical care in border facilities.
The group that led this week’s inoculation effort, Doctors for Camp Closure, represents about 2,000 medical professionals and students. The organization had been working for more than a month to win approval for a pilot program to inoculate those in Customs and Border Protection custody, said Dr. Marie DeLuca, a co-founder who was among six people arrested on Tuesday at the Border Patrol’s regional headquarters in Chula Vista, Calif.
“After more than one year of inaction, we feel that it is important to show that we are serious and ready to provide flu vaccinations,” said Dr. DeLuca, who is an emergency medicine physician from New York.
When the group received no response from Customs and Border Protection about its vaccination proposal, about 20 people from the volunteer team arrived at the Border Patrol’s processing facility in Chula Vista on Monday with 120 doses of the flu vaccine.
Dr. DeLuca said the group was not allowed into the facility and was told to have two of its representatives return the next day for a meeting with border officials.
On Tuesday, after Customs and Border Protection officially rebuffed the group’s offer, doctors, nurses and other supporters protested outside the Border Patrol headquarters nearby. Several demonstrators blocked entrances to the building. Four doctors were among the six people who were arrested and released about an hour later.
“What is at stake are adverse health outcomes and risk of death in a detention center,” said Mario Mendoza, an anesthesiologist who was among those arrested. He said he was 7 when he arrived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant. “All we want to do is give passive medical treatment through flu vaccinations,” he said.
Manny Fernandez contributed reporting from Houston and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington.
