Police Just Discovered an Entire Hotel Has Been Rented Out for COVID-Positive Immigrants

 A charity in the border town of La Joya, Texas, reportedly has rented an entire hotel to house illegal immigrants who have tested positive for COVID-19, giving no notification to the local community.

Fox News State Department Correspondent Rich Edson tweeted Wednesday night, “Police in La Joya, TX, a Border town, announce a charity has rented an entire hotel here for COVID-positive migrants. They say they only found out when a family, showing symptoms and staying there, ate at a restaurant next door. A customer flagged down a police officer.”

A later post added, “They’re advising La Joya to mask up and distance.”

“The La Joya Police Department said a patrol officer was waved down Monday by someone concerned about a group that appeared to be sick at a Whataburger fast food restaurant,” Fox News reported late Wednesday night.

“The officer found a family inside who were coughing and sneezing and not adhering to health guidelines, including the wearing of masks, authorities said during a news conference,” the report said.

La Joya Police Sgt. Manuel Casas said his department and the city had not been notified of the situation.

“We did not know this,” he said. “No one told the city of La Joya. No one told the police department that these people were here, and no one told us that these people were possibly ill.”

The reported individuals were staying at Texas Inn & Suites after being released by Border Patrol.

The report comes one week after the number of migrant detainees who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas soared by 900 percent.

Fox News reported, “There were 135 detainees who tested positive in the first two weeks of July alone, marking a 900% increase in confirmed positive cases compared to the previous 14 months.”

The report added, “The RGV sector is one of the main destinations for migrants crossing the border, seeing more than [2,000] apprehensions each day and accounting for 60% of confirmed positive detainees in the U.S. Border Patrol custody.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republican senators introduced a bill earlier in July to extend Title 42, a provision that allows the U.S. to turn away illegal immigrants at the nation’s southern border due to the risk of their spreading COVID-19.

The Securing the Homeland from International Entrants with Life-threatening Diseases, or SHIELD, Act would continue the public health protections enacted in March 2020, according to Fox News.

Cruz said, “Title 42 has been an integral and extremely successful measure to protect America’s borders and our people during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“If the Biden-Harris policy for open borders is intended to reverse the Trump administration’s success in securing our border, encourage illegal immigration and create an unprecedented crisis, it’s certainly working,” he added.

Fox News reported Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee co-sponsored the bill.

According to a June Axios report, the Biden administration wanted to eliminate Title 42 by the end of July.

However, on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “We have never conveyed or announced a timeline for Title 42. So, nothing has changed in that regard. It remains in place, and it will remain in place as long as that is the guidance from our health and medical experts.”