TX border town in need of refrigeration storage due to growing number of migrant drownings

It should come as a surprise to no one, but the Texas border town of Eagle Pass is requesting refrigerators in which to store the recovered bodies of drowned migrants who attempted to illegally cross the Rio Grande River in the Del Rio sector of the southern border.

The local mortuaries have become overwhelmed.

“There are so many bodies being recovered that the morticians are asking for assistance,” Eagle Pass Fire Department Chief Manuel Mello III told Fox News Digital. “I had never seen so many drownings like we’re seeing right now.”

“We do a body recovery daily,” Mello continued. “It’s very traumatic for my personnel.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Del Rio sector of the southern border has logged over 376,000 migrant encounters since October 2021; an average of nearly 1,100 per day. What’s impossible to know is the number of illegal border crossings that go unnoticed. Since President Joe Biden took office, almost two million illegal migrants have made it into the U.S. via the southern border. Again, that’s a number that represents only the known encounters.

Just two weeks ago, 13 migrants died and 53 others were apprehended while trying to cross the treacherous Rio Grande river.

“Sometimes you’ll be walking in an area where the water will never go above your knee, but all of a sudden you’ll have a drop of about 10, 12 feet,” Mello said of the river. “If you’re carrying a baby, you’re going to go down 10 or 12 feet with that baby.”

Many children have died as a result.

“We had a three-month-old baby, we had a three-year-old baby brother that passed away,” Mello told the outlet. “The uncle was trying to cross, he fell into a deep hole in the river, let go of the babies.”

“The babies drowned,” he said.

A 25-year veteran of the fire department, Mello said he’s never seen anything like it. Prior to this administration, body recoveries hovered around 12 a year. Now, Mello said, they are averaging 30 a month.

“I don’t see any end in sight,” Mello warned.

“I would like to see the federal government jump in and help out in whatever way they can,” the fire chief appealed. “If they could at least stop this migration, that would be awesome.”

Alas, the Biden regime has made it abundantly clear that help will never arrive.

Since October of 2021, CBP has conducted nearly 19,000 search and rescue efforts compared to less than 5,000 in fiscal 2019, the outlet reported.

The deluge of crossings, the sometimes successful rescues and the unavoidable body recoveries have taken their toll on Mello’s department.

“These are young gentlemen, young women are seeing more than any normal person would see in a lifetime,” Mello said. “It’s almost like a war zone.”

“I would ask any government official to come and see what’s going on down here in Eagle Pass,” Mello implored. “We’ve got a big issue here in Eagle Pass.”

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