Mexico demands tighter border control as COVID-19 cases surge in US
Jul 03, 2020
Mexico City [Mexico], July 4 : After months of repeated threat by the US to close its border with Mexico, it is now the turn of Mexican leaders demanding tighter border controls to keep their community safe amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Washington Post reported.
"The situation is very bad in Texas and [cross-border travel] would only bring us problems in northern Tamaulipas," Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, Tamaulipas state Governor, was quoted as saying. He was tested positive for the virus this week.
He is one among the other governors of the bordering states who have pleaded the Mexico Central Government to keep a strict check on people traveling to and fro from the US.
After witnessing a continuous surge in the number of coronavirus cases in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas, the Mexican border states have increasingly come to see the outbreak in the United States as their biggest threat in controlling the epidemic.
The Mexican government has reportedly said that it would be installing "sanitary filters" on the border crossings to check the temperatures of people coming from the US.
"It's so important to implement the necessary measures to protect the health of Sonorans. And one of them, at this moment, has to be reducing the border crossings from the United States toward Mexico," Enrique Clausen, Sonora state's health minister, was quoted as saying during a press briefing.
Meanwhile, the US has continued its deportation to Mexico amid the coronavirus pandemic. After a number of deportees were tested positive of coronavirus after entering Mexico, it triggered fear and anger among the officials.
"Why are they continuing these deportations in the middle of a deadly pandemic, including people who are already sick and who knows how many asymptomatic people," Maki Ortiz, the mayor of the Mexican city Reynosa, told The Washington Post in May.
