Bill Gertz reports for the Washington Free Beacon, July 14, 2014, that health authorities at a Navy base in Southern California took steps last weekend to curtail an outbreak of pneumonia and swine flu among illegal immigrant children housed at the facility, according to U.S. officials.
Both diseases are contagious. According to the CDC, pneumonia is caused by bacteria or viruses and can be severe. The H1N1 virus is considered less dangerous and has been detected in the United States since the 2009 pandemic. The swine flu virus jumped from pigs to humans and can be fatal in some cases.
The outbreak of disease among several of the nearly 600 immigrant children at the Naval Base Ventura County, located north of Los Angeles, initially was thought to be caused by deadly bacterial streptococcal meningitis, according to one official close to the issue.
The pneumonia cases and meningitis scare last weekend followed two cases of H1N1 swine flu among other child immigrants—one at the California base and another in Texas. The virus caused a global pandemic in 2009, but officials said it is considered less dangerous than the meningitis outbreak that began over the past weekend.
Naval officials, along with HHS and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials, sought to block the disease outbreak by quarantines and halting transfers of children into and out of the facility. The sick children were moved to local hospitals where they are being treated.
The swine flu case, discovered late last week, involved a 16-year-old Salvadoran boy who, like others at the facility, had been transferred recently from Nogales, Ariz. A U.S. official said that in addition to the Salvadoran youth treated for swine flu, another case of swine flu was detected in June at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. More than 1,000 immigrant children are being held at Lackland.
HHS spokesman Kenneth J. Wolfe said the illnesses “likely pose little or no risk to the general public,” and insisted that the “arriving children” youths illegally crossing the border have been screened at U.S. border stations for health problems and given medical treatment if needed. Those “children” illegals sent to Pentagon locations had been given childhood vaccinations three days prior to entering Defense Department facilities.
Wolfe said,“If it is determined that children have certain communicable diseases or have been exposed to such communicable diseases, they are placed in a program or facility that has the capacity to quarantine. Children with serious health conditions are treated at local hospitals.” The cost of this care is “fully paid” by the federal government TAX PAYERS.
Other immigrant children are being held at bases in Texas and Oklahoma. The current plan calls for releasing the “immigrant children” illegal youths to relatives prior to their court proceedings on illegal immigration charges.
It appears the flood of illegal immigrants is based on beliefs among those in the region that they can gain entry using a two-step process—first sending thousands of children on a dangerous migration northward into the United States, and then later anticipating that the U.S. government will grant entry to some or the rest of their families in a humanitarian gesture.
Obama has not dealt directly with the crisis. During a recent visit to Denver, the president was photographed drinking beer and playing pool while declining to visit the border or facilities where the children are being held in crowded, refugee-camp-like conditions.
The White House instead has asked Congress to approve $3.7 billion for dealing with the crisis. Both the House and Senate have balked at providing the funding during a time of fiscal austerity.
The thousands of immigrants currently are caught up in a government bureaucratic legal system that is delaying rapid deportation back to their home countries. Critics of the delay say the illegals should be flown back without delay to their home countries, which include Guatemala and El Salvador, on military transport aircraft.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the president is ultimately responsible for the border crisis. Perry said he alerted the president in May 2012 to the flood of alien children who were traveling north on trains “and we laid out exactly what we felt was going to happen if we didn’t address that. And now we’re seeing that become reality, with literally tens of thousands of these young children making this long, arduous, very dangerous trip, being separated from their parents. And it could have been stopped years ago had the administration listened.”
H/t California Political Review
See also:
- Obama’s Brown Shirts threaten health workers who divulge infectious diseases brought by tidal wave of illegals into America
- We need to re-define the term “minors”
- Republicans dither while Obama and Mexico conspire in Invasion of Illegals
- Madness! TSA lets illegals board planes without valid IDs
- Most youth crossing the border illegally will get to stay, study finds
~Eowyn
