Haiti receives 2nd batch of deportees from US amidst COVID-19
Haitians coming home will undergo 2-week quarantine
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – Deportees from the US arrived in Haiti via plane despite concerns that this could add pressure to the country’s existing resources as it combats the novel coronavirus.
As reported by the Associated Press, the group of 129 was escorted by authorities to one of the two designated hotels in the capital Port-Au-Prince. The first batch of 60 deportees were also quarantined there for two weeks.
The director of Haiti’s migration office, Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, said that three of the migrants who arrived in early April tested positive for the virus, however none from this new batch has a temperature.
Haiti is being supported by the World Health Organization with free testing kits, while the local government covers the costs for deportees’ meals per day and hotel accommodations during the compulsory two-week quarantine.
Delva declined to comment on how much costs the government has incurred.
Calls to suspend deportation amid COVID-19
A Miami-based Haitan rights advocacy group called on President Jovenel Moïse to stop accepting deportees and request that U.S. President Donald Trump suspends these deportations.
Marleine Bastien, executive director of the Family Action Network Movement, wrote, “These flights do not only put the deported individuals at risk, but they also threaten to spread the coronavirus in Haiti, a country as you know all too well is ill-equipped to deal with a pandemic.”
Despite the unresponsiveness of government officials regarding the concerns, Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe stated that the country is caring for the deportees.
“They are Haitians. They are coming home. We have to receive them,” he said in an interview with a local radio station. “We will test them after 14 days, which is the incubation period for the disease, and everyone will go home.”
At the time of this writing, at least five deaths in the 72 confirmed new coronavirus cases have been reported in Haiti according to the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine coronavirus database.