What happened to the incubation periods at quarantine stations in Ellis Island? Why does coming here illegally exempt aliens from the laws on the books that make them inadmissible until we know they are not a threat?

On Sunday, Aaron Hull, chief patrol agent of the El Paso sector, divulged to the public what we already suspected but most government officials assiduously covered up. The head of the second busiest illegal immigration corridor told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is increasingly “caring for more and more sick people, because a lot of these aliens coming in are carrying contagious health conditions, things like chicken pox, scabies, tuberculosis, lice."

Tuberculosis. That is the disease we sought to eradicate through our laws as early as 1907 by requiring every prospective immigrant to wait at Ellis Island, away from the population, until they got the green light to enter. That is a far cry from what a CBP official told me two weeks ago – that “we have not seen any specific, unusual, or alarming public health or infectious disease threats in persons in CBP custody.”

CBP declined to comment further on Hull’s revelation upon my request.

If border agents have confirmed the arrival of illegal aliens with tuberculosis who have not been treated in hospitals, what about all those exposed to it in close quarters who did not yet exhibit symptoms and were released within hours of apprehension? Unlike in the past, where illegal immigrants waited for days in ICE facilities before either being deported or released, CBP is directly releasing thousands of aliens into the interior within hours. A bunch of illegal aliens caught in Arizona and El Paso this past month were released in Tucson.

It is simply inconceivable that this is not a priority threat to the American people. It is certainly a violation of current immigration law. The law (8. U.S.C. §1182(a)(1)(A)(i)-(ii)) states clearly that any alien “who has failed to present documentation of having received vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases, which shall include at least the following diseases: mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, pertussis, influenza type B and hepatitis B, and any other vaccinations against vaccine-preventable diseases” are inadmissible. Moreover, 8 U.S.C. § 1222(a) requires the government to detain them “for a sufficient time to enable the immigration officers and medical officers to subject such aliens to observation and an examination sufficient to determine whether or not they belong to inadmissible classes.”

DHS officials, including the current acting DHS secretary, have testified that these people have largely never “received immunizations.”

Why is the lack of detention space a rationale to vitiate our laws and release them anyway and not a rationale to turn them back across the river or at least hold them in tent cities right at the border until or unless they voluntarily depart?