COVID-19: MSF demands US stop deportations to Latin America & the Caribbean

The US, under emergency coronavirus measures, is expelling all migrants either apprehended or presenting claims for asylum at the border with Mexico, where there is no reliable system to ensure quarantines or isolation for deported people.

This situation is especially critical in Mexico's northern cities, already notoriously dangerous places where migrants are targets of systematic violence. These cities are documenting the greatest number of cases of COVID-19 due to their proximity to the US border and higher levels of population movement. One of the shelters where MSF works in Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas state, had to close its doors to new admissions after 15 people contracted COVID-19 from a person who had recently been deported from the US.

"The situation in Nuevo Laredo shows how continued deportations from the US—despite the fact that the country has the highest numbers of affected people in the world—can put countless other people at risk," said Martín. “It also highlights how shelters need sufficient resources in order to adapt their facilities to minimize transmission.”

The closure of migrant shelters, which has occurred throughout Mexico since the start of this outbreak, has left migrants and asylum seekers with limited ways to control their exposure to the coronavirus and limited access to the basic services they need.

MSF will soon begin activities in Tijuana, a city bordering San Diego, where the high number of COVID-19 cases threatens the collapse of the health system.

In Mexico, MSF called on the government to close its migrant detention centers following a riot in late March, in which a Guatemalan citizen died. The detainees were protesting crowded conditions in the center and a lack of information and action on COVID-19 prevention from Mexican authorities.

Mexico must also ensure that the process of voluntary repatriation of migrants to El Salvador, Honduras, or other countries is carried out with the necessary guarantees to prevent the spread of COVID-19, said MSF.

Currently, these countries do not have quarantine mechanisms that guarantee the safe isolation of people arriving from abroad and full access to diagnostic and treatment methods.

“In El Salvador, upon arrival, deportees are sent to separate quarantine centers for deportees, whose conditions differ greatly from those of the rest of the population entering the country,” adds Stéphane Foulon, MSF coordinator in El Salvador. “Although health care is assured, sanitary and isolation measures cannot always be fulfilled because the flow of deportees from the US is constant.”

MSF is adapting its activities in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries where it works in the region to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.