Ebola at the Border? Despite Statistics, Indiana Representative Says Unaccompanied Minors Could Carry the Virus

A congressman attempted to unite the Ebola crisis and the border crisis on Monday by suggesting that some of the 57,000 mostly Central American minors who have been caught at U.S.-Mexico border since October 2013 may be carrying the virus.

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., appeared on WIBC-FM's Garrison radio show, Northwest Indiana Times reports. During the interview, Rokita said that he previously spoke with Rep. Larry Buschon, R-Newburgh, who is also a heart surgeon. According to Rokita, Buschon agreed that sending the children to live with families in the U.S. is a threat to public health.

"He said, look, we need to know just from a public health standpoint, with Ebola circulating and everything else -- no, that's my addition to it, not necessarily his -- but he said we need to know the condition of these kids," Rokita said.

According to U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement data cited by the newspaper, 30,340 of the unaccompanied minors have been sent to live with family or sponsors in the U.S. this year, including 245 sent to Indiana, and none of them have Ebola. The children undergo medical screenings and receive vaccinations before being sent to their new homes.

Rokita questions this and said that the safest bet is to keep the children together.

"If we believe that a majority of them should be reunited with their parents in their countries, letting them diffuse into the community is just going to be harder to get them to the hearing, harder to find out where they are, who they are," he explained.

In July, Rep. Phil Gingre, R-Ga., also suggested that the immigrant children could be carrying Ebola, saying there are "reports of illegal immigrants carrying diseases," MSNBC reported.

The World Bank said that El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the three countries where most of the unaccompanied minors are from, have higher vaccination rates than the U.S., according to MSNBC. Northwest Indiana Times reports a human has never contracted Ebola in the Western Hemisphere.
---

Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.