Legionnaires outbreak at Border Patrol facility: Disease at border puts migrants at risk: 'There’s a crisis here'

ANIMAS, N.M. — There is a health crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border that was deliberately covered up during a visit by members of Congress, according to the head of a sanitation company supplying outposts there.

 

 

Tricia Elbrock, the owner of Elbrock Water Systems in Animas, N.M., supplies portable bathrooms at facilities near the border. She told the Washington Examiner that after she dropped off two portable toilets near the border at the request of the Border Patrol, her cleaning staff was "overwhelmed" after hundreds of migrants used them.


“There’s a crisis here — the influx of people. These little counties and towns cannot handle that mass,” Elbrock said during a recent meeting at her business in Animas. She also fears the number of migrants using the bathrooms is a hazard. “There’s a health issue with the porta-potties."

Elbrock dropped off two portable toilets, but said two wasn't nearly enough. She said one is appropriate for 10 to 15 people and that the Border Patrol should have asked for 15 based on how they were used. "That facility can’t handle that many people. They’re gonna be overwhelmed," Elbrock said.


Four days after dropping off those portable toilets, the base asked her company for an emergency cleaning because lawmakers from Washington were coming to look at Antelope Wells and Lordsburg, N.M., the following day. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus wanted to see the conditions of facilities where a young Guatemalan girl who died of sepsis on Dec. 7 had visited.


“When they went in there to clean — they were overrun,” said Elbrock. “They just threw [toilet paper] on the floor there and piled it up. We had to go and clean it. That was a concern of ours handling the waste on that toilet paper. So we talked to the Border Patrol. … 'It's totally trash, we’re going to pull out. We’re a small, family-owned business down here and maybe they need to get someone bigger than we are.'"


Elbrock worried about putting her team's health at risk so she paid for employees to get Hepatitis shots and gave them masks, gloves, breathing devices, and suits to wear. The next week — days before Christmas — the town of Lordsburg asked her company to drop off four portable toilets.

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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/disease-at-border-puts-migrants-at-risk-theres-a-crisis-here