The speedy removal of unaccompanied children and teenagers represents a significant change from previous practice, under which migrants designated as “unaccompanied minors” were taken to shelters operated by the federal Office
of Refugee Resettlement and usually given a chance to apply for asylum in the United States.
Before the pandemic-related border ban, such young people were only deported after a lengthy legal process in which they were given access to social workers and, in some cases, government-funded lawyers. Under the ban, they can be expeditiously expelled without those protections.
Migrant advocates said the shift puts the children at risk of kidnapping or other exploitation.
“When you send kids back without any precautions, without any screening, you create a situation in which traffickers, smugglers and people who want to take advantage of them are literally waiting for them in these border towns,” said Michelle Brané, the director of migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission.
The issue of deportees being returned to Guatemala has become especially sensitive as the country attempts to contain its own coronavirus outbreak.
For weeks, the authorities have evaluated the health of deportees arriving at the airport in Guatemala City to screen for possible infection. Those who have a higher-than-normal temperature or other potential symptoms are whisked to a special hospital and tested for Covid-19, officials said.
This past week, Guatemala’s health minister, Hugo Monroy, said American deportation flights were aggravating the outbreak in Guatemala by returning people already infected with the virus, and the foreign minister, Pedro Brolo, repeated the complaint on Friday.
The United States, Dr. Monroy said, “has practically become the Wuhan of America.”
Various Guatemalan officials have put the number at between 30 and 43, most of them apparently aboard two flights that arrived on March 26 from Mesa, Ariz., and on Monday from Brownsville, Texas.