Coronavirus Warning Goes Out to Shelters Housing Unaccompanied Alien Children

03/05/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So far, President Trump has no plans to close the border.

As regular readers here know, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (mostly teenagers, btw) who cross our borders illegally and without parents.

The shelters in which they are housed are usually operated by contractors including some of the nine refugee contractors mentioned often here at RRW.

I guess you have all been seeing reports that Covid-19 mostly takes its toll on seniors, but that children can be infected and show only mild symptoms and could thus be missed as carriers.

From CNN:

Shelters told to report any coronavirus cases among migrant children

The federal agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children told staff at shelters Monday that children who may have been exposed to or at risk from coronavirus must be flagged to the health division within four hours, according to an email obtained by CNN.

Children found to be exposed to coronavirus and with symptoms of respiratory disease should also be isolated, the agency told shelters.

Care providers are generally expected to have “an identified space within the shelter facility that may be used for quarantine or isolation” in that a child needs to be separated for a medical reason, according to the agency’s website.

The guidance sent out by the US Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is indicative of the increased vigilance across the government amid concerns over coronavirus. The dispatch lists symptoms of coronavirus, the agency’s response, and specific guidance to ORR care providers.

[….]

The Office of Refugee Resettlement told CNN in a statement last week that as of February 27, there have not been any suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) disease cases among unaccompanied children in ORR care. There are around 3,600 children in care.

An email went out to staff at those shelters Monday. “This guidance is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations and is adapted for the [unaccompanied children] Program,” the email says. “This is a rapidly evolving situation, and updated guidance may be released in the future, as necessary.”

[….]

An attached document says ORR’s Division of Health for Unaccompanied Children is working with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, among others, to monitor when an unaccompanied child “from a high-risk location as designated by CDC … is initially referred to ORR care.”

Shelter administrators have four hours to notify ORR if they have any suspicious illness, or any ‘child’ who might have been exposed to the virus.

The document also provides a breakdown of identification of risk and response, adding that “any child found to be at possible risk for COVID-19 based on travel history or contact with a known case must be flagged to [Division of Health for Unaccompanied Children] via email within 4 hours.”

More here.

By the way, I have 320 previous posts in my health issues category.

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Middle East Migration: Could it Hasten the Spread of Covid-19?

02/28/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to a report at The New Humanitarian, moving populations of people in conflict zones and where governments are weak are particularly vulnerable to a critical health crisis like the coronavirus.

Pakistan has closed its border with Iran

Of course, The New Humanitarian is most concerned with the refugees themselves and less concerned with the citizens of the countries where the migrants may end up.

Countries that seal their borders may be able to ward off the worst of a potential crisis.

I just told you in my previous post this morning, that Turkey is opening borders to allow ‘refugees’ to move through to Europe.

I wonder, is the US screening refugees and asylum seekers especially those from hotspots like China and Iran?

From The New Humanitarian:

How the coronavirus outbreak could hit refugees and migrants

A surge in coronavirus cases outside China has raised concerns the outbreak could be particularly devastating for vulnerable refugee and migrant populations in countries hobbled by conflict.

Over the last week, cases of the illness known as Covid-19 have escalated dramatically in Iran, and new infections linked to the cluster have emerged in more than half a dozen other countries in the region including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon.

Very cool interactive map! Go here to see it: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/map-watch-the-coronavirus-cases-spread-across-the-world/2303276/

At least 12 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) live between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey – countries linked to Iran by either frequent travel, irregular migration routes, shared borders, or all three. Iran itself hosts nearly one million refugees, mostly from neighbouring Afghanistan, and an estimated 1.5 to two million undocumented people.

The effects of armed conflict “fragment the public health system and the infrastructure that enables governments to actively perform surveillance of diseases”, said Dr. Mohammed Jawad, a researcher at Imperial College London who studies the impact of conflict on public health.

Dr. Adam Coutts, a public health specialist at Cambridge University who focuses on the Middle East, said refugees are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus or other diseases, due to ”high geographical mobility, instability, living in overcrowded conditions, lack of sanitation and WASH (waters, sanitation and hygiene) facilities, and lack of access to decent healthcare or vaccination programmes in host communities”.

But refugee populations are often left out of disaster and epidemic preparedness planning at the best of times. And simply reaching marginalised refugees and migrants with information is also a challenge.

Politicians in Italy and Greece have already started using the spectre of asylum seekers and migrants carrying the virus across international borders to drum up support for hardline migration policies. But public health experts believe the real risk is to refugee and migrant communities themselves, who face instability, sporadic access to healthcare, and now the growing threat of stigmatisation.

Much more here.

This post is filed in my ‘health issues’ category along with 300 plus additional posts.

Bad News for Europe: Turkey Will No Longer Stop Migrants from Crossing into Greece

02/28/202002/28/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….

If Europe doesn’t have it bad enough already, it looks like a new wave of migrants from Syria is on the way to the west. And, they aren’t all Syrians!

In 2016 the Turkish government, in a deal with the EU, agreed to not permit border crossings into Europe, but it looks like that agreement is now out the window.

At a time when the whole world is focused on the movement of sick people, here is an example of how vulnerable every country that doesn’t seal its borders is to the transmission of deadly pathogens.

From Deutsche Welle:

Turkey will not stop refugees ‘who want to go to Europe’

No caption to indicate where or when the photo was taken but note the two on the left in face masks.

Hundreds of Europe-bound migrants have begun heading to northwest Turkey towards Bulgaria and Greece. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party said the refugees began their journey after a Syrian attack in Idlib.

Turkey is “no longer able to hold refugees” following a Syrian attack that killed 33 troops in Idlib, Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, said on Friday.

The announcement comes as some 300 migrants walk through northwest Turkey towards its borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday, according to DHA news agency.

“As a result of the attack, the (refugees) in Turkey are heading towards Europe, and those on Syrian territory are heading towards Turkey,” Celik told CNN Türk shortly after midnight Friday morning. “Our refugee policy is the same as before, but we are now in a situation where we can no longer hold them.”

Demiroren news agency said the group of migrants, including women and children, embarked on their journey from Turkey’s Edirne province toward borders with Bulgaria and Greece — two European Union nations — at around midnight. Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Moroccans were among those in the group.

[….]

According to EU figures, Greece saw more than 60,000 asylum seekers arrive from Turkey on the shores of its Aegean islands in 2019, and it expects more than 100,000 more in 2020.

More here.

See my Invasion of Europe archive where I’ve been filing stories for a decade on the topic.

***Update***

Don’t miss my follow-up post this morning:

Middle East Migration: Could it Hasten the Spread of Covid-19?

JBS Swift recalls 6.5 million pounds of beef tainted with salmonella

10/05/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A week ago it was Cargill in Ft. Morgan, CO recalling beef that was believed to be responsible for at least one death and scores of illnesses from E.Coli. (See here that a Tennessee family is suing Cargill!).

We recently told you about Cargill here when they settled a religious discrimination suit with Somali refugee workers.

jbs-greeley — JBS Swift is headquartered in Greeley, CO. I took this photo in the summer of 2016 on my tour of refugee-overloaded towns. See here how worried JBS was when Trump lowered the refugee cap. Big Meat braces for refugee shortage: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/09/bloomberg-trumps-refugee-ceiling-of-50000-could-hurt-big-meat/

This week it is JBS Swift headquartered in Greeley, CO that is recalling even more than Cargill.

Both JBS and Cargill hire extensively from the refugee population with the help of the nine federal resettlement contractors*** and the US State Department.

From Food Safety News: (hat tip: ‘ManxCatsRule’):

JBS in massive beef recall over 16-state Salmonella outbreak with 57 illnesses

Raw ground beef is the probable source of a new 16-state Salmonella outbreak involving 57 illnesses, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Thursday, along with a massive recall.

The recall is for more than 6.5 million pounds of beef products from JBS Tolleson Inc. in Tolleson, AZ. The traceback investigation by FSIS, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health and agriculture agencies have identified JBS as the common supplier of the various raw, non-intact beef products.

[….]

Consumption of food contaminated with Salmonella can cause salmonellosis, one of the most common bacterial foodborne illnesses. The most common symptoms of salmonellosis are diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 12 to 72 hours after eating the contaminated product. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days. Most people recover without treatment. In some persons, however, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. Older adults, infants, and persons with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop a severe illness. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact their health care provider.

[….]

Greeley, CO-based JBS USA is the American food processing company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s largest beef producer.

A Brazilian meatpacker is changing America!

More here.

See my file on JBS Swift by clicking here.

***Don’t miss this 2017 post! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is one of the nine federally funded resettlement contractors.

Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor

That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, MD.

Also see my ‘health issues’ category here.

Hundreds of refugees being removed from “squalid” housing in Omaha, Nebraska

09/22/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more reason that the Trump Administration should be pushing for a complete review of the US Refugee Admissions Program with an eye to up-ending—dumping entirely or re-writing—the foolish system put into motion by the Refugee Act of 1980.

We simply can’t bring in so many refugees that they then live in squalor, placed there by some supposedly ‘religious’ charities paid by US taxpayers with virtually no oversight of what they are doing and no accounting of where our money goes.

And, not to mention, having an economic, cultural, and health impact on Americans kept in the dark about the arrival of poor third worlders to their neighborhoods.

Omaha apartment inspections — Inspectors entering housing complex where hundreds of Burmese refugees were placed by a resettlement contractor working for the US State Department.

Maybe not ‘humanitarian’ at all!

Some might say we are actually promoting slave labor for the meatpacking industry and other giant globalist companies.

It is a long story, and you should read it all at the Omaha World-Herald (hat tip: Joanne):

Squalid Omaha apartments housing refugees targeted by city operation in ‘humanitarian effort’

City of Omaha housing inspectors descended Thursday morning on a north Omaha apartment complex to inspect units and potentially remove and relocate up to 500 refugees from Myanmar living among bedbugs, lice, rodents, gas leaks, mold and other squalid living conditions.

Officials described the operation at the Yale Park Apartments, near 34th Avenue and Lake Streets, as a “humanitarian effort” involving code enforcement, police and fire personnel, as well as members of the philanthropic community and social service agencies who could be tasked with finding temporary housing for hundreds of people.

[….]

Tenants, which include an estimated 175 children, may be forced to live out of community centers equipped with cots in coming days as the scramble begins to find places for them to stay. City officials said they’re trying to respect the tenants’ cultural wishes, too, which likely includes being placed together as much as possible.

[….]

Three men entered the courtyard Thursday morning wearing white hazmat suits and orange rubber boots. People wearing Omaha Public Schools, Heartland Family Services and Lutheran Family Services gear were standing by.

More here.

The reporter wants us to believe that the problem is entirely the landlords fault, but doesn’t tell us that it was Lutheran Family Services, a federal resettlement contractor, that was likely responsible for placing refugees in questionable housing in the first place.

Meatpacking laborers!

The article tells us that many of the Burmese work in meatpacking at nearby Cargill. (Yes, the same Cargill company we mentioned here yesterday with the E.Coli recall).

In 2017 Cargill in Nebraska expanded the size of a plant that then required more laborers. See here.

Learn more about Cargill at wikipedia, it might change some of your buying habits.

If these meapackers want the refugee laborers maybe they should subsidize better housing for them! Or, better still, go back to paying good wages so Americans will be happy to do the job!