The leading professional organization for sheriffs in the United States says a public health crisis is occurring along the southern border of the country as immigrants infected with COVID-19 enter the country illegally and exploit local resources. Some social media reports incorrectly claim that the National Sheriffs Association said more than half of the people entering the country without documentation tested positive for COVID-19. Instead, the group estimated that up to half of undocumented immigrants are infected with the deadly disease.
Examples of the claim can be found here, here and here .
“If it is true that 50% of the illegals crossing the border test positive for the virus, then there is something wrong with this government allowing it all,” one commenter wrote, reflecting a number of comments that put the alleged high linked to President Joe Biden’s border policy.
The false claim that ‘the National Sheriff’s Association warns the public that about 50% of illegal immigrants at the border are positive’ stems from a draft resolution the association announced in March on ‘the current challenges for public safety a border landscape. The whole association is expected to approve the decision in June.
The resolution, written by the group’s committee on border issues, which consists mainly of sheriffs from the southwestern United States, states that the coronavirus pandemic “significantly complicates the challenges we face at the border”, according to a copy posted by Washington. Researcher and verified by the association’s spokesperson (here, here, www.sheriffs.org/).
“It is estimated that between 5 and 50% of the people who cross without documentation are COVID-positive. In any other construction, infection rates would be so high that it would cause concern to public health officials, ”reads the resolution. “We are now facing a serious potential public health crisis along the border.”
The association’s spokesperson said during a telephone conversation with Reuters Fact Check that the committee based the percentage on government information as well as the sheriff’s personal experiences in their communities.
The confirmation of the series of estimates of the association falls outside the scope of this fact check. There were 479 positive cases among detainees supervised by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 12, 2021, out of a total of 14,051 people detained, according to the agency’s latest statistics. ICE arrests and detains people who may have entered the country legally but then violated the law or are foreign refugees. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol does not publish COVID-19 statistics for immigrants (www.ice.gov/coronavirus, here).
VERDICT
Untrue. The National Sheriffs Association did not say that “upwards” of 50% of people entering the United States illegally tested positive for COVID-19.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work here to check out social media posts.