Flying with TB

We have received many responses to our posts earlier this week about the truthfulness of Lou Dobbs’ statements about the thousands of cases of leprosy allegedly brought by immigrants to the United States.  Well, a substantiated case of a communicable disease crossing crossing the U.S. borders hit the national news earlier this week.  You no doubt have all heard the news about the Atlanta lawyer infected with a rare, often fatal form of tuberculosis, who flew on commercial airlines around the world and exposed many passengers to this communicable disease. One wonders what was going on with U.S. border security. CNN (here) reports that

“On Thursday, a senior House member said he wants to know how Speaker got through U.S. Customs and Border Protection even though his passport had been flagged in its computer system. His passport was checked at the U.S.-Canada border, a Homeland Security official told CNN. An alert that Speaker should be detained and isolated, and public health officials should be contacted, showed up on the Customs and Border Protection’s computers, but he was allowed to cross into the United States at Champlain, New York, anyway, the official said. Speaker was at the border crossing for less than two minutes.”

KJ