Immigration workers, wearing masks as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, receive Guatemalans who were deported from the United States at La Aurora International airport in Guatemala City, Thursday, March 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Moisés Castillo)
By SONIA PÉREZ D. Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala again began receiving deportation flights from the United States this week after a one-week pause prompted by three deportees testing positive for COVID-19.
The Guatemalan government had asked the United States to not send more than 25 deportees per flight, to give them health exams before departure and to certify that they were not infected.
However, the flights resumed Monday with 76 migrants aboard the first and 106 on the second. Guatemala’s foreign ministry did not immediately clarify why the U.S. had not complied with its requirements, but the flights came on the same day that the U.S. State Department announced that aid would continue to Guatemala and the other Northern Triangle countries.
At least three of the migrants who arrived Monday were taken directly to a hospital for COVID-19 testing. One of the flights also included 16 unaccompanied minors, according to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute. Citing the epidemic, the U.S. has started swiftly deporting unaccompanied minors rather than holding them in protective settings as specified by law.
Also on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that he had informed Congress that the U.S. government would continue assistance for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in order to continue to lower illegal immigration and accomplish other policy objectives.
Pompeo said that since illegal immigration from those three countries peaked in May 2019, “encounters” with migrants from those countries had fallen 76%. The U.S. government has effectively ended any possibility of seeking asylum at the southern border with emergency restrictions applied in the face of the epidemic.
Before the epidemic, the U.S. had also started sending Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala and similarly had agreements in place to begin doing so in Honduras and El Salvador.
