They pluck dead bodies, including babies, out of the river almost daily on the U.S.–Mexico border. It’s taking its toll.
EAGLE PASS, Texas—Mass illegal immigration is pushing rescue crews in this small Texas border town close to their breaking point.
The mighty Rio Grande has become a river of misery for Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello III and his 52 first responders.
His medics sometimes confide: “Chief, I’m sick and tired of going out to the river and pulling bodies out,” Chief Mello told The Epoch Times, as he described how much the border crisis is affecting his department’s rescue workers.
They are grappling with record numbers of drowned men, women, and children who perish while crossing the river from Mexico into the United States.
The chief’s crews are risking their lives in nightmarish scenarios with unidentified people who are sick, hurt, or dead—not just along the river, but also on nearby roads, ranches, and railways.
They are responding to immigration-related emergencies so frequently that legal residents of their own community may be left waiting for medical care.
“There are days it seems that the ambulance wails never stop,” the chief told a congressional committee recently, noting that many of those ambulances are headed toward the Rio Grande and its surrounding area.
People in the community hear those sirens. Some see the bodies washed up along the riverbank. And they feel the impact.
“It breaks my heart to know that there are children drowning in the river; there are people on the way over here being raped and being robbed,” Eagle Pass resident Ruben Camarillo, a 35-year-old father of a 9-year-old son, said.
As he stood on a city street corner in support of former President Donald Trump’s recent border-focused visit to Eagle Pass, Mr. Camarillo told The Epoch Times that illegal immigration is “causing so much death and destruction … and we’re experiencing that firsthand.”
Rescuers Need Assistance
The Eagle Pass Fire Department is getting little, if any, help from the federal government to ease burdens stemming from the nation’s border crisis, Chief Mello said.
By Janice Hisle
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