Emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch show that government officials were warned in 2014 that many of the illegal alien minors who came to the U.S. during an unprecedented border surge that summer were likely to have tuberculosis.
“We might as well plan on many of the kids having TB,” reads a June 26, 2014 email that Alaric Denton, an environmental health scientist, sent to his colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Most of these kids are not immunized, so we need to make sure all our staff are immunized,” Denton continued in the email, which Judicial Watch obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
At the height of the crisis many conservatives, including Judicial Watch and some Republican lawmakers, warned that the mass migration would bring disease and other problems. But the Obama administration downplayed the risk at the time.
More than 70,000 unaccompanied alien children came to the U.S. during that summer, mostly from Central America.
In his email, Denton also warned his colleagues that “some of these kids are not really kids they are young adults.”
“We should be wary of personal safety,” he wrote at the time.
There have been numerous cases of illegal aliens who were classified as unaccompanied children committing violent crimes while living in the U.S. Some have joined street gangs, including MS-13, which was started in El Salvador but has a growing presence in the U.S.
The Judicial Watch emails can be read here.