Frequent U.S. Visits By TB Patient Noted

DHS Official Acknowledges Errors

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2007; A02

The Department of Homeland Security's chief medical officer yesterday acknowledged errors in the federal government's failure to stop a Mexican businessman infected with multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis from entering the United States 21 times over seven weeks in April and May.

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Jeffrey W. Runge, DHS's acting assistant secretary for health affairs, said he and the agency's deputy secretary at the time, Michael P. Jackson, wanted to revoke the border-crossing card of Amado Isidro Armendariz Amaya after learning on April 30 about his situation and World Health Organization guidelines against international travel by such a patient.

But Martin Cetron, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global migration and quarantine division, objected that doing so would drive patients in Mexican border areas with similar conditions underground and create a bigger health risk, Runge said.

Armendariz, a Ciudad Juarez resident with a business in the United States, turned in his border card on or about May 31 only after he was confronted by his physician at a Juarez clinic run by Texas's health department. The physician was concerned about Armendariz's continued unauthorized travel to neighboring El Paso, amid publicity over the efforts to quarantine Andrew Speaker, an American lawyer with the same disease whose honeymoon in Italy led to a global manhunt.