Eagle Pass emergency services go to Rio Grande daily to treat migrants, fire chief says
Texas border town requests refrigerators for migrant bodies after drownings overwhelm mortuaries
The massive influx of migrants illegally crossing the Rio Grande has caused drownings and emergency calls to overwhelm the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas.
An Eagle Pass Fire Department first responder arrives at either the Rio Grande or a Customs and Border Protection (CPB) holding facility nearly every hour to address a migrant-related emergency, costing an extra $21,000 a day, according to the Texas city's fire chief.
"There's not a day where we don't go to the river's edge to transport patients, and the city swallows the cost," Fire Chief Manuel Mello told Fox News.
The Eagle Pass Fire Department has been averaging about 45 EMS calls a day — about 30 of them migrant-related — since mid-September, Mello said. Before that, a busy day would be around 30 calls in total.
Chief Manuel Mello points to a spot in the Rio Grande river where the Eagle Pass Fire Department often recovers the bodies of drowning victims. (Fox News Digital/ Jon Michael Raasch)
The department spends roughly $700 on each call, meaning migrant-related responses alone costs "approximately $21,000 in total" each day, according to Mello.
"We have all kinds of calls from minor cuts and bruises to hypothermia to heart attacks to broken bones to even childbirth," he told Fox News. "So we're transporting all kinds of patients, and they're all migrants."
"Sometimes the hospital gets overwhelmed, and we're waiting 20 to 30 minutes with a patient inside the ambulance for a bed because we only have one hospital," Mello continued.
EAGLE PASS FIRE CHIEF WARNS CITY'S MORTUARIES WERE OVERWHELMED WITH DROWNING VICTIMS:
Migrant encounters at the southern border hit new records earlier this month. Over 10,000 migrants were being held in CBP facilities around Eagle Pass, Rep. Tony Gonzalez, who represents the area, said Dec. 20, noting that around 4,000 crossed into the city the day before.
"There's no funding for this period," Mello said. "So the city loses money right there."
Dec. 18, 2023: Migrants flood into Eagle Pass, Texas, waiting to be processed at a CBP holding facility. CBP has recorded over 200,000 migrant encounters in December so far. (Fox News)
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The federal government has not reimbursed Eagle Pass for expenses involving the migrant surge, according to Gonzalez. The city has also lost over $500,000 responding to migrant-related incidents this year, Eagle Pass Assistant Fire Chief Rodulfo Cardona told KENS5, a San Antonio-based station.
Local businesses, meanwhile, are also hemorrhaging cash, Mello told Fox News. December's surge prompted CBP to close an international railroad crossing from Eagle Pass into Piedras Negras, Mexico "in order to redirect personnel to assist the U.S. Border Patrol with taking migrants into custody," according to an agency statement.
"We usually have a lot of travelers coming in from Mexico to do their Christmas shopping," the fire chief said. "With all of this going on … we're not getting the shoppers that we used to."
"The federal government has to put its foot down and say ‘no more migrants coming in,’" Mello told Fox News. "The government needs to step it up and stop this madness."
