Thread: Guatemala official: 44 deportees tested positive for virus

Guatemala official: 44 deportees tested positive for virus

SONIA PÉREZ D.

Associated Press April 16, 2020, 5:46 PM EDT

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Virus Outbreak Guatemala

Guatemalan citizens recently deported from the United States acknowledge reporters as they stand inside a temporary shelter where the deportees are waiting for their new coronavirus test results, in Guatemala City, Thursday, April 16, 2020. Guatemala's health minister said on Tuesday that deportees from the U.S. were driving up the country's COVID-19 caseload. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)


GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Forty-four Guatemalans deported on one flight from the United States this week have tested positive for COVID-19, a Guatemala government official with knowledge of the situation said Thursday, amid rising rejection of deportees due to virus fears.


Later, Guatemala Foreign Affairs Minister Pedro Brolo told The Associated Press the government had again suspended deportation flights. He did not explain why, but said the move was temporary.


"We're working on the details," Brolo said, adding that he did not know when the flights would resume.


The flight with the infected deportees arrived in Guatemala’s capital Monday from Brownsville, Texas carrying 76 Guatemalans. Three deportees displaying coronavirus symptoms were immediately taken for testing. When one of those tests came back positive more who had been quarantined at the airport were tested and 43 more resulted positive, said the official who had not been authorized to share the information publicly and requested anonymity.


Presidential spokesman Carlos Sandoval said the official total number of infected deportees remained at five.


“We’re going to check with the Health Ministry,” he said. “For the moment I can only confirm the cases the (president) has said. I wouldn’t know what to say, I can’t even say no, but I also can’t confirm it.” He said he would have an official statement later.


It was the latest sign that the president’s office and health authorities might not be on the same page.
On Tuesday, the government’s accounting of deportees with COVID-19 was drawn into question when Health Minister Hugo Monroy said that on a March deportation flight from the U.S., more than 50% of the deportees had later tested positive for the new coronavirus. The president’s office later confirmed that Monroy was talking about a March 26 flight from Mesa, Arizona with 41 passengers, but said the official number of infected deportees had still not been adjusted.


The plane on which 44 have tested positive was one of two flights that arrived Monday after Guatemala lifted a one-week pause on deportation flights from the U.S. That suspension had been imposed because three other deportees had earlier tested positive.


Monroy has said the deportees are a worrisome factor driving up the country’s COVID-19 caseload. The government said Wednesday that this week it had started testing all deportees, regardless of whether they showed symptoms, when anyone on a flight tested positive.


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no immediate comment on the report but has said in recent days that it screens everyone in its custody and quarantines anyone showing symptoms of COVID-19. The agency said that 100 detainees in its custody have tested positive for the virus, including 17 at a detention facility in San Diego and 12 at one in Batavia, New York.


ICE says that 25 employees at detention centers have tested positive for the virus, including 13 at a removal staging facility at the airport in Alexandria, Louisiana.


Deportees and their potential to carry the virus into Guatemala have become a sensitive topic. The U.S. government has continued deportations through the pandemic. But some Guatemalan communities are beginning to reject deportees returning home out of fear that they could carry the virus.


On Wednesday evening, President Alejandro Giammattei referenced an incident in which townspeople fearing the virus had allegedly organized to burn deportees.


Videos circulated on social media showed hundreds of angry residents gathered in a community in Quetzaltenango west of the capital. They accused deportees who were staying in quarantine in a government facility of leaving it in a threat to the community.


Giammattei said five community councils had organized “to try to go burn the center, because they want to burn the people.” In a televised address, he said those 80 deportees had arrived earlier in the week and all had been tested. So far, none had come back positive.


“It’s already guaranteed they don’t pose a risk to anyone,” he said.


Flor Gómez, from the human rights prosecutor’s office in Quetzaltenango, said emotions had run high in the community.


“I wouldn’t say they were going to lynch them,” she said. “Yes, they were upset, the intention was to catch them and hand them over to police.” She said there was a lot of stigmatization of deportees.


Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s consul in Del Rio, Texas, said Guatemalans who are stopped by Border Patrol agents are returned to Mexico within a half-hour without any medical exam and often without having their photos or fingerprints taken under rules that took effect March 21 to combat the virus’ spread.


“They aren’t registered or anything,” Paniagua said.


Unaccompanied children are held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and flown back to Guatemala within two or three days, Paniagua said. The flights from Brownsville to Guatemala are designed for Guatemalans who have just crossed the border in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.


Byron Milian, a 25-year-old, deportee who returned to Guatemala earlier this month, said he tried to quietly come home without neighbors noticing because he was worried about their reaction amid the pandemic.


Under orders from the health ministry he has self-quarantined for two weeks. He said health officials check on him every other day.


Milian had left Guatemala Feb. 20 and crossed illegally into Arizona in early March. U.S. Border Patrol intercepted him en route to Phoenix.


He and a few other migrants were taken to a U.S. government building and held for about 10 minutes, during which time they took his temperature. Then they were loaded back into a truck, driven to the border and handed over to Mexican authorities.


The Mexican authorities asked him if he wanted “to fight for papers or have them send us back to our country,” he said.


Within a week Mexico had delivered him back to Guatemala In Guatemala, authorities took his temperature, listened to his lungs and stuck a tongue depressor in his mouth.


“On Sunday my quarantine ends,” he said. “Thank God everything is normal."


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AP writers Ben Fox in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/guatemala...214629796.html

I do NOT care!


Send their Caravans of thousands back.


WHERE WAS THEIR "HEALTH MINISTRY" WHEN THEY DUMPED THOUSANDS OF THEIR OWN CITIZENS ON THE U.S.A.???


100% of them tested "positive" for some other infectious disease or medical condition: TB, AIDS, HIV, STD's, gonorrehea, syphillis, cancer, pregnancy, kidney failure, tumors, lice, scabies, respiratory illness, sepsis, flu, hepatitis, measles, diabetes, and who knows what!!!!


They had NO concern for what they dumped over our border!


Send them all back and their UACs.


Now "they" do not "like" it and are concerned...LOL!!!! Feel the pain and expense! We do not like what YOU do to our country either by dumping your people on us!


All the "concern" for your sick people???? YOU take care of them all.


No more detention. Close it down and deport them all.


No court, no path to stay, no amnesty and NO bogus asylum for a "better life".

4/15/2020

75% of migrants deported to Guatemala on single flight tested positive for coronavirus