The Greyhound bus company reportedly is pushing the Biden administration to come up with a way to guarantee that migrants seeking to board its buses from the border have tested negative for the coronavirus before being transported across the country.
“It is critical to public safety that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] provide 100% assurance that no one released that can be reasonably expected to ride a Greyhound bus be infected with COVID-19 (or mixed with other potential passengers that have tested negative),” Greyhound President and CEO David Leach wrote in a letter dated Wednesday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, obtained by Border Report.
“We need assurance that any detainees released by ICE have proof of a negative COVID-19 test, similar to the proof required for international airline passengers who arrive at US ports of entry. Greyhound already asks our customers to stay home and NOT travel if they are not feeling well or have been diagnosed with COVID,” Leach states. “However, migrants simply do not have that choice unless the government or their sponsors house them while they quarantine.”
Border Patrol and ICE are not testing anyone taken in custody. Border Patrol has been increasingly releasing people from its custody because ICE does not have room to accept transfers. Migrants who are released rely on Greyhound and other bus companies to travel to their final destinations in the United States.
In South Texas, local cities and towns are giving testing kits to nonprofit organizations so that they can administer tests at bus stations and shelters. Just this week, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, revealed that 108 people who had been released by Border Patrol in nearby Brownsville, Texas, tested positive.
While this is not the first time migration to the U.S.-Mexico border has dramatically increased over the past decade, Leach said the difference between then and now is the pandemic.
“We simply do not have buses and drivers ready to meet surges in demand without emergency funding. In order to properly serve immigrants coming into the southern border and traveling to their sponsor destination, Greyhound will be operating one-way moves throughout the country and in order to get the resources back (buses and drivers) to the border to continue operations,” Leach said.
Greyhound has requested funding assistance from the Biden administration to cover the costs of “repositioning buses and drivers from other parts of the country to wherever they may be needed.”
