It was the cough heard around the country.
Four sick migrants without face masks went into a restaurant in La Joya last month, and the concern raised by a patron sparked a conversation that led to a statewide executive order and a federal lawsuit. The police chief there, however, is looking at things a little differently than perhaps some may have initially thought.
A 21-year-old mother, a teenager and two toddlers walked into a Whataburger restaurant near the city’s only hotel, the Texas Inn, around noon on July 26. A woman who was in the restaurant flagged down a police officer, Soraida Varela, after she saw the group was not wearing face masks and was visibly ill.
Varela observed “the children were coughing, sneezing and had a lot of wet and dried mucus all over their face,” according to the incident report obtained by The Monitor.
“I don’t know who that customer is, but I’d like to thank that customer for bringing it to our attention,” Ramon Gonzalez, La Joya police chief, said Thursday.
Up until that point, Gonzalez believed the situation along the border was “manageable” — in spite of the increase in border apprehensions that stretched federal resources thin in the Valley.
The restaurant incident signaled a shift.
Gonzalez wasn’t in town that day. The interim police chief was away to receive training. But the situation swayed his attention back home where his officers traditionally help assist migrants looking for Border Patrol agents.
“We’re helping out all these people who are coming in.’ We would take them waters and provide them medical attention whenever it was needed. But, after the Whataburger incident, it kind of changed perspectives,” the chief said.
Officers had already adjusted to the post-covid surge status quo where they receive the COVID-status of residents who call 9-1-1 before they arrive at the location, though many residents are already vaccinated and wear masks indiscriminately.
That sense of ‘the new norm’ was shattered when confronted with the unfamiliar situation in late July.
The migrant group at the restaurant had forms that police officers did not issue them, and they were staying at a local hotel without prior notice issued to Gonzalez, who also serves as the chief emergency management coordinator.
Both revelations unraveled as police worked to understand the arrival of the sick migrants in their city.
Yet, the practice to place migrants — who tested positive for the virus or exposed to someone who was sick in quarantine at a local hotel — was not new. The Monitor reported on it as early as January.
Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley takes in most of the migrants released from federal custody in the Valley. After the pandemic, they took on the financial responsibility to pay for testing, which is largely not done at the federal level.
The policy to quarantine those who test positive was implemented to keep the respite center in downtown McAllen, the largest migrant shelter in the Valley, from shutting down if the virus spread indoors.
Gonzalez countered, “Who is it that you’re really helping?”
Although Pimentel did not respond to a request for an interview, she released a statement in the days after the incident in La Joya.
“This misinformation that all these families are all over exposing everybody to COVID is false. It’s not true,” Pimentel said in a recorded statement July 29.
Reaction was swift: migrants were instructed to stay at the hotel, the Salvation Army delivered food, staff worked to clean and disinfect rooms, and a security guard was sent to stay at the hotel.
Most notably, the governor responded two days after the situation with an executive order to restrict migrant transport to local, state and federal law enforcement officers. The intention was to place a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper at the respite center and keep migrants, sick or not, from leaving, it was later disclosed.
The Biden administration sued, and the plan has yet to be implemented.
Though the order specifically highlighted the situation in La Joya, Gonzalez never supported it.
“No, that wouldn’t have helped us in that situation,” Gonzalez said. “It was not a solution to the problem. It was almost mitigating from point A to point B. That’s what it came down to.”
When Gonzalez read the executive order, he immediately thought, “How are they going to be transported?”
Up through the end of July, Border Patrol used contracted personnel to move 120,000 migrants this fiscal year, according to a declaration by Rio Grande Valley Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings.
If drivers couldn’t take migrants to Border Patrol facilities, it could have created large masses of people waiting in La Joya.
“If that would’ve gone into play,” Gonzalez said, referring to the governor’s executive order, “we would’ve had hundreds, thousands of people just waiting just to get transported to get processed. I believe we would’ve seen people get irritated, not wanting to wait.”
The small city by the border is not equipped to handle large groups, Gonzalez said. “We don’t have the facilities from restrooms, to showers, to medical anywhere near in our cities for these individuals.”
Limiting Border Patrol’s ability to move migrants to the respite center where they receive testing would have made it impossible to know who was sick and in need of quarantining.
More agents would have also been moved from enforcement duties to transport leaving more work for police officers in La Joya.
As it is, large groups entering the U.S. through the city continue to keep officers busy. They’ve noticed an uptick in the last four days. “They’re having to travel up north or through the communities until someone runs into them,” Gonzalez said.
The incident from last month changed how they assist migrants.
“We had to change. We’re not transporting anybody inside our units,” the chief said. “We’ll guide them. We’ll provide them with as much as we can. We went back to putting on our masks. We went back to checking our temperature at every shift.”
When they respond to emergency calls from the hotel, where migrant children running fevers and struggling to breathe have been taken to the hospital, they treat every call with caution and wear personal protective equipment.
On Thursday, the night shift supervisor told Gonzalez they had another call where a pregnant woman was COVID-positive and going into labor.
That same day, the federal government continued to fight in court against the governor’s executive order by requesting to keep the same venue.
Gonzalez, who said he isn’t interested in the political theater, proposed a different solution.
“Right now, I truly believe the border needs to be closed.”
