Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

The U.S. has deported to Guatemala more than two dozen migrants who tested positive for the coronavirus after agreeing to establish health protocols to prevent the deportation of infected migrants, a senior Guatemalan official said.

In an effort to contain the spread of the virus in the impoverished Central American country and at the request of Guatemalan authorities, the U.S. government agreed to deport only migrants with medical certificates showing they tested negative for Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.

But a Guatemalan health official said that 28 deportees tested positive upon arrival since May 4, when the first flight under the new protocols arrived from Brownsville, Texas, until mid-June. Those migrants are considered by Guatemalan authorities as "false negatives."

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said that the agency doesn't deport migrants who are known to have tested positive for Covid-19 or who have symptoms potentially caused by the virus.

Since May 4, ICE has tested 474 Guatemalan deportees. Of those, 38 detainees tested positive and were returned to ICE facilities, the spokeswoman said.

Guatemalan officials see deportations from the U.S., which has been hit by the pandemic with more than two million Covid-19 cases, as one of the main potential sources of contagion in the country.

The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating in Guatemala and Central America, despite strict lockdowns implemented in most countries. Total confirmed cases in Guatemala, the region's most populated nation, tripled since early June to some 14,500, while deaths grew fivefold, reaching 582 on Tuesday, according to Guatemala's Health Ministry.

On Friday, President Alejandro Giammattei fired the health minister and his top collaborators. Edwin Asturias, who heads a presidential commission for the Covid-19 emergency, said last week that the real number of cases could be 10 times higher given Guatemala's limited testing.

Some public hospitals are already saturated with coronavirus patients. "Sadly, this is growing horribly," said Marco Antonio Barrientos, the director of the Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City.

In neighboring Honduras, confirmed cases have also tripled in June, to nearly 14,000. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was hospitalized for pneumonia last week after testing positive for the coronavirus. He is reported in stable condition.

Deportation flights have already strained the relations between the U.S. and President Giammattei, who is a surgeon and former prisons director with little political experience who took office in January.

Mr. Giammattei said in May that the U.S. has been sending "false negatives" to Guatemala, although he didn't specify how many. That came days after he lashed out at the U.S. at a conference organized by the Washington-based Atlantic Council for not doing enough to guarantee safe deportation flights.

"Guatemala is an ally of the U.S. The U.S. is not an ally of Guatemala," he said at the event. In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala later said it has committed $2.4 million to support Guatemala's response to the pandemic.

Since March, the U.S. has sent a weekly average of 75 deportation flights to a dozen countries in Latin America, according to the nonprofit Witness at the Border. Most of the flights were to Mexico and Central America, where some 90% of all deportees come from.

It is unclear whether other countries have received infected deportees. Calls to Honduras and El Salvador migration agencies weren't returned. A spokesman at Mexico's foreign ministry didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The flights have sparked worries among advocacy groups that the U.S. is contributing to the spread of the new virus in the continent.

"The most responsible and humane response from the Trump administration should be to halt all deportations flights during the pandemic," said Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and Migrant Rights at the nonprofit Washington Office for Latin America.

A reason that may explain why the U.S. has sent some positive coronavirus cases to Guatemala, even after the new protocols were agreed on, is that the U.S. is conducting rapid coronavirus tests to deportees, Guatemalan officials say.

The U.S. is mainly using ID NOW rapid point-of-care tests from Abbott Laboratories, according to the officials, which Guatemalan officials say have a low accuracy rate. Abbott says the tests find positive cases of Covid-19 with an accuracy rate of nearly 95%.

Observers also say that some tests that are initially negative turn positive a few days later.

The U.S. and Guatemala are in talks to improve the way the U.S. is handling deportees, a Guatemalan foreign ministry official said.

Guatemala closed its borders in mid-March and imposed a nationwide curfew from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m.

The U.S. has deported more than 2,100 migrants to Guatemala since mid-March. Guatemala has tested some 900 of them upon arrival, the Guatemalan health official said. A total of 186 migrants tested positive as of June 15.

The U.S. has sent 14 flights with some 640 migrants since May 4, when the new protocols began to be implemented, according to the Guatemalan foreign-ministry official. Flights have a lower occupancy rate than in prepandemic times.

Write to Juan Montes at [email protected]