EAGLE PASS, Texas – With wave after wave of migrants flooding into Eagle Pass, it’s been hard for the city’s fire department to stay afloat.
It’s why the city added a fifth ambulance, which Fire Chief Manuel Mello said is strictly to treat migrants.
“We’re doing up to 50 calls a day,” Mello said. “On a normal day, probably about 27, 30 calls a day. So an increase of about 20 calls and all (of them) migrant-related.”
Mello said the department had to implement a policy within the past few weeks to treat patients and not transport them unless it’s a “very critical incident.”
“We have one hospital, one emergency room,” he said. “That emergency room is overwhelmed frequently.”
Mello said the injuries he’s seen on the migrants — men, women and children — can be as minor as cuts and bruises; however, some are more severe.
“We went to the river’s edge to pick up a patient,” he said. “That patient had a broken femur. The person had been in an accident in Mexico and still crossed.”
Some don’t make it across the river.
Between January 2023 through December 3, 2023, Mello said the department responded to 43 drownings.
“12 of those were minors,” he said. “15 years and younger.”
The humanitarian crisis unfolding in the city’s backyard has become too much for some of Mello’s toughest firefighters to bear.
“One of the lead swiftwater rescue guys never complained in his life,” he said. “And one day out of the blue, he just said, ‘I’m tired of going out there. I’m tired of seeing dead people.’ That really hits home.”
While the state and federal governments continue to clash over how to address the border problems, Mello and his crew prepare for the next surge.
“I’m hoping that it, it completely stops,” he said. “But, then again, history has told us that it’s not so.”
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