The Associated Press reported that VP Mike Pence allegedly compelled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to close US borders when the COVID-19 situation was at its peak. The vice president reportedly ordered CDC director Robert Redfield to use the emergency powers of the agency to close the borders in March against immigrants who may be infected with the coronavirus.
The CDC had reportedly responded that the statistical evidence of the COVID-19 spread did not warrant the closure of the borders under Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act which empowers federal health officials to make far-reaching decisions that will protect the public during a pandemic.
Insiders stated that VP Pence called CDC director Redfield to order the border closure and that Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf were also listening in on the call when the vice president phoned. Pence had allegedly called Redfield after the CDC turned down the request of President Trump to shut the national borders given that the directive was too early.
The CDC ultimately closed the US borders with Mexico and Canada and according to evaluations by the Associated Press, about 150,000 adults and children were vacated from the United States as a direct result of the directive. Thousands of immigrants and asylum-seekers at the southern border of the country were also impacted by the order, analysts said.
Although President Trump was urged by public health authorities to enforce the use of face masks and physical distancing to curtail the spread of the pandemic, some Trump aides such as Stephen Miller and VP Pence bore on CDC to close the borders to immigrants. Olivia Troye, a former aide to Pence who resigned from her position to the VP said the Trump administration valued politics over the wellbeing of Americans.
She said the government pressurized the DHS and CDC to take actions that go contrary to their wishes.
An international analyst with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Anthony So, wrote to Redfield in April that “the decision to halt asylum processes ‘to protect the public health’ is not based on evidence or science,” and said, “this order directly endangers tens of thousands of lives and threatens to amplify dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia.”
But Katie Miller, Pence spokeswoman, denied that her boss ever ordered the CDC to shut down the borders against immigrants, saying “Vice President Pence never directed the CDC on this issue.”
Source: thehill.com
