“That was very high,” Pete Saenz, the mayor of Laredo, told The Washington Examiner.

Dr. Victor Trevino, the Laredo health authority, confirmed the numbers with the paper.

Officials in Laredo, a Texas city that’s located across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time. However, they offered a similar positivity percentage in a federal lawsuit filed last month.

Officials said in the complaint that Customs and Border Protection officials have been releasing immigrants in the city, despite a large number of them testing positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

The surge in illegal immigrants crossing the border amid the COVID-19 pandemic presents a safety concern, Republican lawmakers and others have argued.

“Americans are sick and tired of endless mandates while watching COVID-19 cases surge at the border,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter this week.

The Laredo case numbers are the highest recorded along the border, but officials in McAllen, Texas, said last week that out of the 7,000 immigrants released by federal officers into McAllen the week before, 1,500 of them have tested positive for COVID-19.

“Lately, we’ve been getting about 1,800 immigrants a day,” McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos said in a video arguing against unchecked immigration. “Then, coupled with the fact that 15 percent of the immigrants have COVID, has caused substantial problems to our great city of McAllen.”

Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, told The Epoch Times this week that immigrants are probably responsible for 15 to 20 percent of COVID-19 cases in the community, citing the last survey officials in the border city completed.

“The COVID deal is getting really serious again and really bad. And again, here we are on the southern border. ‘Just come on in.’ I mean, it just doesn’t make…

Read full story here: 40 Percent of Illegal Immigrants Released in Texas City Tested Positive for COVID-19: Officials