The coronavirus event that the media has made its top story certainly has people wound up. Example numero uno from down south: Mexicans are demanding more border controls to keep out possibly infectious Americans — who could have imagined such a thing?
It’s certainly true that the Mexican Presidente Lopez Obrador has maintained a strangely unconcerned attitude about the contagious illness, which cannot be reassuring for his people.
This tweet shows some of the protesters who want to wake their presidente out of his snoozing regarding public health:
Here’s more about the new Mexican pro-borders viewpoint:
Coronavirus: Mexicans demand crackdown on Americans crossing the border, BBC, 26 March 2020
Mexican protesters have shut a US southern border crossing amid fears that untested American travellers will spread coronavirus.
Residents in Sonora, south of the US state of Arizona, have promised to block traffic into Mexico for a second day after closing a checkpoint for hours on Wednesday.
They wore face masks and held signs telling Americans to “stay at home”.
Mexico has fewer than 500 confirmed Covid-19 cases and the US over 65,000.
The border is supposed to be closed to all except “essential” business, but protesters said there has been little enforcement and no testing by authorities.
The blockade was led by members of the group Sonorans for Health and Life, who called for medical testing to be done on anyone who crosses from the US into Mexico.
Jose Luis Hernandez, a group member, told the Arizona Republic: “There are no health screenings by the federal government to deal with this pandemic. That’s why we’re here in Nogales. We’ve taken this action to call on the Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to act now.” (Continues)
Meanwhile, some friends of American sovereignty fear an uptick in illegal border crossers if the coronavirus kicks up trouble in Mexico.
Borders — (nearly) everybody likes them now in the Age of Corona!
TUCKER CARLSON: So a lot of consequences maybe we haven’t thought through of this pandemic, and one of them is countries to our south could be destabilized by it, and you could see a surge, a big surge of illegal immigration come up from Latin America. If that does happen, and it absolutely could happen, are we prepared to deal with it?
Mark Morgan is Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and he joins us tonight. Mr. Morgan, thanks very much for coming on. This does not seem like a crazy possibility. It’s very easy to imagine that a place like Mexico which doesn’t seem to be doing anything to protect the population is flouting any suggestion that they lock anyone down — that they could have massive problems with this. What would that mean for us?
MARK MORGAN: Well, Tucker, you’re spot on. It’s not hyperbole to think about that, but what I want your listeners to know, this isn’t the first infectious disease crisis, right — SARS, H1N1 and what we do — CBP as well as other governmental agencies — look, we hope for the best, we plan for the worst, and that’s exactly what we’re doing now.
So we know that that could be a possibility, so we’re taking aggressive containment and mitigation strategies now to help stem that if that should become a possibility. And the president’s authority and his agreement with the CDC order last Friday is doing just that.
In six days Tucker, it’s amazing what we’ve accomplished: the overall people trying to enter our country illegally in six days because of the CDC’s order that the president approved — has dropped 50 percent, and another key stat if you don’t mind is is our vehicular traffic and our pedestrians; actually both of the northern and southern border has dropped by over 65 percent.
That means the Mexican citizens and the Canadian citizens themselves are actually self-policing and doing what the medical experts say, and they’re staying home and that’s because of this president and the CDC’s order
CARLSON: Right, I mean to be fair though, those are mostly people who obey the law, coming up from Mexico legally every day or in from Canada. I wonder, are you seeing a drop in what we’ve heard for the last three years from Democrats which is it’s immoral to keep anybody out, to enforce borders: borders themselves are immoral because no one’s illegal. Are people saying less of that kind of nonsense now the coronavirus is here?
MORGAN: So it’s interesting, Tucker, because for a long time we’ve been saying borders matter, and we were talking about that, we’ve been talking, hey drugs are pouring in this country killing 68,000 people last year. We have bad guys — criminals, gang members — pouring in, but we’ve also been saying that that infectious disease coming across the border’s a real threat as well, but people are dismissing, and they weren’t listening, but they’re listening now. It’s that really the third part of that stool, infectious disease — it’s important and it does matter. Secure borders matter.
CARLSON: As we just saw in a segment we did on New York, leaders in some places don’t care if you get sick; they’re never going to protect you because it makes them feel guilty. Unbelievable. Mark Morgan, great to see you tonight.