Mexico must also end deportations to other Latin American countries

In Mexico, MSF has called on the government to close its migrant detention centres following a riot in late March, in which a Guatemalan citizen died. The detainees were protesting crowded conditions in the centre 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 the disease.

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

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

MSF is adapting our activities in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti, as well as in the United States, to collaborate in the fight against COVID19, in addition to the rest of the countries of the continent where we are present.