Border River Is Also Sewage Drain: Officials fear diseases as immigrants use route to get to U.S.
CALEXICO, Calif. June 21 – As it flows north from Mexico into California's Imperial Valley, the New River not only brings with it more than 20 million gallons of raw sewage daily, but also a human cargo of illegal immigrants that may be drenched in bacteria and pollutants that cause communicable diseases.
Public health officials along the border worry about this toxic, infested river and the people who use it as a route into the United States.
A recent report by the federal Centers for Disease Control noted that California had double the rate of infections of two food-borne pathogens associated with human sewage, campylobacter and shigella, than any other state.
Along the Texas-Mexico border, health officials are battling tuberculosis brought in by undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America. Of the 16,500 people apprehended last year in the Port Isabel, Texas, region, 89 percent tested positive for TB bacteria.
The rate of full-blown tuberculosis in the lower Rio Grande Valley, a fertile agricultural area that borders Mexico, is triple the national average, according to Dr. Abraham Miranda, deputy director of immigration health services for the U.S. Public Health Service in Port Isabel.