U.S. border officials have blocked hundreds of foreigners from entering the country at land ports of entry along the Canadian and Mexico borders, a senior homeland security official said Thursday.
“We’ve turned people away on both borders, hundreds of them. In total, during the course of the last month … we’re under 1,000, but you’re in the hundreds, to give you a ballpark sense,” Ken Cuccinelli, who is performing the duties of deputy secretary of homeland security, told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday.
On the U.S.-Canada border, approximately 300 non-U.S. citizens have been turned away based on White House-implemented travel restrictions that forbid people who have traveled to China or Iran within 14 days from entry. Of the 300 people barred entry at vehicular and pedestrian crossing points on the northern border, 113 were Canadians, and 90 were Chinese, Cuccinelli said.
“Some people may find it ironic, but the largest excluded group are Canadians, and it is Canadians who have traveled to China in the previous two weeks,” he said. “The next largest group were Chinese nationals, and then it drops substantially from there.”
Customs and Border Protection, whose officers work at those crossing checkpoints, determined the three crossings where Chinese citizens present for entry most often and deployed Health and Human Services Department employees, similar to having government health officials stationed at airports where flights from high-risk countries are arriving. Those ports of entry are in Blaine, Washington; Buffalo, New York; and San Ysidro, California, which is on the southern border.
CBP officers first ask travelers driving across the border about recent travel, including if anyone they encountered had been to China or Iran recently. If travelers say they have been to other countries with high levels of coronavirus outbreaks, the officer can inquire about health or refer the person to have medical officials do a health screening.
“Korea, Italy, Japan, etc., there is not a proclamation barring those, but if you get a yes answer to those areas of the world, you’re still going to pay closer attention,” Cuccinelli said. “And these are not medically trained individuals, but if there’s anything they suspect, then those individuals will be pulled to secondary screening. Contact will be made with CDC, and it essentially becomes a consultation at that point with genuinely medically trained folks.”
Cuccinelli did not state the number of people who have been turned away at the southern border, which includes international crossings in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. DHS did not respond to an inquiry about it.
Last week, President Trump floated the idea of shutting down the southern border and barring all trade and travel. The Washington Examiner exclusively reported in December 2018 that the closure of the 2,000-mile southern border would disrupt $300 billion a year in trade or an average of $821 million each day.
“Ecuador has six cases. Mexico has five cases. Brazil’s reported a case or more. When do those start finding their way into the immigration flow?” Cuccinelli said. “When we observe that happening — and we have not observed that happening — that will begin to affect our calculus on the southern border and having to be more aggressive, potentially using some legal authorities that we’re not engaging right now.”
