Biden: Fully-vaccinated Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tests positive for COVID – three days after attending cop speech with Biden
Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, throwing off his plans to travel to Colombia with Sec. of State Antony Blinken.
‘Secretary Mayorkas tested positive this morning for the COVID-19 virus after taking a test as part of routine pre-travel protocols. Secretary Mayorkas is experiencing only mild congestion; he is fully vaccinated and will isolate and work at home per CDC protocols and medical advice. Contact tracing is underway,’ DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa said in a statement.
Blinken will now travel to Quito, Ecuador on Tuesday and Bogotá, Colombia without the DHS head to meet with President Iván Duque and Vice President-Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss tackling irregular migration and drug trafficking, among other priorities.
The secretary attended an event with President Biden on Saturday to honor fallen law enforcement.
It is not clear to what extent the two men had contact, but one photo shows Mayorkas standing beside First Lady Jill and Biden outside, all unmasked. FBI Director Christopher Wray stood on the other side of Mayorkas.
‘To Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas, thank you for being here and for the great job you’re doing for us,’ Biden said at the 40th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the Capitol. ‘Thank you very, very much. And it’s a tough job.’
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Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, throwing off his plans to travel to Colombia with Sec. of State Antony Blinken
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The secretary attended an event with President Biden on Saturday to honor fallen law enforcement.
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It is not clear to what extent the two men had contact, but one photo shows Mayorkas standing beside Biden and First Lady Jill outside, all unmasked
Mayorkas’ busy week was also supposed to include a trip to Capitol Hill to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.
Wishing Secretary Mayorkas a speedy recovery from #COVID19,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, wrote on Twitter. ‘Look forward to a rescheduled Senate Judiciary hearing and working with him to deal with our broken immigration system.’
The diagnosis also marks the second time Blinken has narrowly dodged Covid-19 exposure in recent weeks, as State Department spokesperson Ned Price announced a positive test late last month.
The Colombia trip comes as the tens of thousands of Haitian migrants are marching through the South American nation as they make their way to the US-Mexico border.
A record-shattering number of Haitian migrants have come to the US in the last month, and the trend doesn’t appear to be stopping as more people continue to pour into the Colombian town of Necocli, a popular spot for smugglers to shepherd people through the perilous Darien Gap in Panama.
The Darien Gap is a 66-mile stretch of rainforest between North and South America. Its dangerous terrain is part of the reason it’s been left undeveloped and why it poses such a great risk to the people crossing it now.
More than 70,000 migrants have traveled through the Darien Gap this year, Panamanian authorities have said.
Most of the migrants in recent months have been Haitians, many of whom had been living in Chile and Brazil since the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
On Monday, GOP Rep. Tony Gonzalez, Texas, said that Panama’s foreign minister Erica Mouynes told him that as many as 100,000 migrants have crossed through her country on the way to the US, and 52 of those they apprehended had ties to al-Qaeda.
The Biden administration, undoing ‘inhumane’ Trump-era immigration policies, has put addressing root causes at the center of its immigration policy, laying blame on climate change-driven weather factors, political and economic instability and crime that has wrought Latin America and South America.
This post first appeared on Daily mail
