Louisiana AG Sues Biden Admin after Illegal Immigrant from China enters US with ‘Drug-Resistant’ Tuberculosis
This particular strain has a mortality rate is anywhere from 34-39%. ICE has announced its intent to release potentially infected detainees without being medically cleared by the Louisiana Department of Health if an order requires released.
A recent incident involving an illegal Chinese immigrant with a rare form of tuberculosis has sparked concern and legal action in Louisiana.
The migrant originally entered the country through California. From there, she was flown to Alexandria, Louisiana, with approximately 100 other detainees then transferred to various Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities throughout the state.
The immigrant was eventually released into the general population at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile in August, despite showing tuberculosis (TB) symptoms.
This movement potentially exposed at least 200 other detainees and staff members to the rare TB strain. The Louisianans exposed to the migrant being shuffled around by the feds were extremely unhappy with these developments, and did not want the individual released into the general population until cleared by public health officials.
However, ICE refused the request.
The patient was tested for TB after showing some signs of the condition and transferred to two other facilities before returning to the detention center at Richwood.
Three days later, despite growing symptoms of TB, the immigrant was taken to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile and she was released into the general population there. It wasn’t until October 9 that Louisiana Department of Health officials received positive results on her condition.
Shortly after that, officials issued an order requiring ICE to hold detainees in facilities until they could be cleared for release by the Department of Health, but the agency refused, the lawsuit alleges.
“This particular patient has a very resistant strain of tuberculosis,” Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham told reporters. “It is the only case in Louisiana, and we normally do not see a case such as this except from a foreign country.”
Justifiably, the Louisiana Attorney General is outraged with the lack of federal cooperation with this important public health matter, and is suing the Biden administration.
Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed an “emergency lawsuit” against several Harris-Biden administration officials last week after a Chinese migrant with a rare form of tuberculosis illegally entered the US.
The lawsuit seeks to prevent federal immigration officials from releasing “potentially infected detainees” that came in contact with the Chinese national – who has a “rare, aggressive, and drug-resistant form of tuberculosis which carries high mortality rates” – while she was in the custody of immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“ICE has announced its intent to release potentially infected detainees from its two contract facilities [in Louisiana] — without being medically cleared by the Louisiana Department of Health — if an order requires release,” the complaint states.
“By ICE’s telling, its hands are tied once its immigration-based detention authority runs out,” the lawsuit continues, warning that migrants who may have contracted the disease will be released “onto Louisiana streets, its bus stations, and its airports.”
The particular strain of concern in this case is a rare, aggressive, and drug-resistant form of the disease.
The lawsuit says the inmate is infected with mycobacterium tuberculosis, which impacts the lungs. It says the variant is drug-resistant and poses a grave danger. It also says that the inmate has been in contact with about 200 other people — prisoners and non-prisoners alike.
“Studies say the mortality rate is anywhere from 34-39%,” the state says in its lawsuit, which was filed Oct. 16 under seal and unsealed Tuesday. While still under seal, a judge told ICE to abide by the state’s request pending a hearing in Lafayette on Oct. 31.
The lawsuit says testing on the woman in July was “highly positive” for TB, but she was placed in the general population in August.
Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham said strain could be contained and the patient was receiving the proper medications.
In the early 19th century, tuberculosis, also known as “consumption,” was a major cause of death in the United States. By 1900, the death rate from TB in the U.S. was alarmingly high at 194 per 100,000 persons.The disease was so prevalent that it was responsible for killing one in seven of all people who had ever lived by the beginning of the 19th century.
American began winning the war against TB after antibiotics were discovered and widely utilized after World War 2. Streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against TB, was discovered in 1943, followed by para-aminosalicylic acid and isoniazid in 1952.
By 1995, the rate of new TB cases had decreased to 8.7 per 100,000, which is the the lowest since national surveillance began in 1953. And I suspect most Americans would like to keep it this low.
However, effective public health policy making is way down on the priority list when it comes to the Biden-Harris administration. It also shows how potentially hazardous those choices have been to Americans.
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Comments
we have to get the feds off our backs
the feds are the brit royalty of the 1600-1800 ruling over us
There is something particularly infuriating that the same government that strongly recommends (to the point of near compulsion) parents inject their toddlers with DOZENS of vaccines while at the same time allowing literally anyone from anywhere to walk across our southern border to enter the country. Drug-resistant TB has been a known thing for a very long time but not a real worry for US clinicians because it wasn’t really a problem in Central or South America. But, we’ve allowed so many people in from Asia without any kind of vetting at all, thanks to Harris, DRTB is now something that US doctors have to worry about.
Wait a couple of days. Pfizer will announce a vaccine that is not yet tested but will get an exemption like the covid stuff. Then, schools and employers will mandate the new vaccine under threat of expulsion or firing.
Same old song, new tune.
Probably not. There has been a TB vaccine for more than 100-years. We don’t get it in the US for a variety of reasons. But, mostly because the dangerous kind of TB isn’t – wasn’t – a thing in the US. Harris is Making TB Great Again.
Yeah. The treatment regimen exists even for resistant TB but as this case shows if we ain’t screening for it, holding folks until the tests come back, then extending quarantine if positive until controlled it doesn’t matter.
IMO the way to make the d/prog STFU or at least get them pipe down over immigration is to put up a damn wall, ruthlessly round up and deport in the interior, punish employers, cut off govt funding for illegals and reopen Ellis Island. Put all the folks on converted barges parked in the harbor and the daily throughput is the limit. When the.d/prog, open border crowd starts whining point out that Ellis Island is open.
My TB tests often come back ambiguous. I *think* it’s because my grandmother contracted TB right before she died and I helped care for her in her last weeks. I’ve never been symptomatic but a blood test once revealed antibodies for TB suggesting that I was infected but fought it off.
When I was working in Plant Ops in a local hospital years ago, my test was again ambiguous. The hospital put me on a prophylactic regimen of oral drugs as a just-in-case measure and gave me a green card saying that I had the treatments.
Not exactly the same as an active case spreading germs around.
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My second Iraq deployment was with a dozen or so other US personnel embedded as advisors with the Iraqi Army in Ramadi. Several contracted TB, not me thankfully. Those dudes had a six-month regimen of treatment and couldn’t consume alcohol b/c it interfered with the drugs to treat TB. Those dudes were highly PO getting that news at the conclusion of what was supposed to be a 9 month deployment that turned into 16 months.
I distinctly remember a mass inoculation regimen in the US in the late ’50s or early ’60s. A little four-pronged skin pop, like a plastic thumbtack. I imagine we old farts who took that must show up with antibodies.
I remember it in my early Air Force years, 69-77. Was that an inoculation? I thought it was the TB tine test. Every time they checked it they scratched their heads wondering if it was positive or negative.
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1969 I would have been in high school and I remember I was in short pants when we all had to get those. But the “tine test” phrase rings a bell, so that’s probably what I’m remembering.
That was the TB test.
This is the government playing Russian roulette with people’s lives for the sake of ideology. But that’s the kind of thing that particular ideology (leftism) demands. Just as it demands that anyone complaining be called a racist.
I’d find some way to share the disease with the open borders crowd.
Louisiana should ship this guy to Washington Reagan. But on four different flights with three other guys who look remarkably like him.
The US had TB all but stopped within its borders and stopped immunizing for TB in about 2005, My oldest daughter was immunized in the Philippines but my younger two were born in the USA and were not immunized.
Interesting enough the immunization that they used in the Philippines caused false positives here in the states, we had to work with both the federal and state health departments to get final clearance for her certification of health