‘Double standard’: Communities share border surge horror stories with Congress

The fire chief in a Texas border community told Congress on Thursday that two-thirds of his department’s ambulance calls now deal with illegal immigration, and he’s had to dedicate one of his ambulances just to handling those emergencies.

Chief Manuel Mello III said making those runs costs his city of Eagle Pass as much as $18,000 a day, and it’s overwhelming the city’s hospital too, where the emergency room has just 18 beds. Some residents have had to wait in an ambulance for two hours until a bed frees up, and others never get an ambulance at all.

“Sometimes our residents are left without an ambulance service,” Chief Mello told the House Judiciary Committee.

Two thousand miles away in New York City, the schools have had to block some kids from preschool and can’t hire enough school safety officers as they deal with an influx of migrant children. The city has asked parents to volunteer instead to police the schools, said Danyela Souza Egorov, vice president of the Community Education Council for New York City School District 2.

She also said the crush of new students who don’t speak English is so large that the school system simply can’t hire enough English-language learning teachers.

“I think legal immigrants like myself look at this process and ask why there is this double standard,” she said.

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