EVEN amidst the coronavirus pandemic, the Donald Trump-led United States (U.S.) Administration has been deporting undocumented immigrants to their Latin American and Caribbean homes, notwithstanding the fact that many of those countries have strained healthcare systems due to the spread of the virus.

However, speaking with the newspaper on Sunday, Minister of Citizenship, Winston Felix said that Guyana is not challenged in this regard, at least not yet.

“No indication has been made to us. We haven’t received any indication about any such movement,” he said.

On April 26, 2020, the New York Times reported that in March, U.S. officials put a group of 41 Guatemalan detainees on two deportation flights to their native country and roughly 30 tested positive for the virus shortly after arriving.

In April, Haitian officials reported that three deportees from the U.S. tested positive for the virus upon arrival.

“An additional 129 deportees landed there [Haiti] Thursday on a flight from Texas; none had been tested before departing. Haiti’s dysfunctional government, presiding over a broken-down economy and wobbly health-care system, is hardly able to care for the sick under the best of circumstances. It is utterly incapable of handling an influx of COVID-19 patients,” the New York Times stated.

Some countries’ leaders believe that the deportations run the risk of spreading COVID-19 to struggling countries with already challenged health-care systems, ill-equipped to deal with it.

Guyana has been managing the spread of the virus fairly well, but has cut off international travel to prevent imported cases since March 18, 2020. This ban was recently extended to June 3, 2020 after public health and other authorities determined it necessary.

The ban gives exception to outgoing flights; cargo flights; medivac flights; technical stops by airplanes for fuel and specially authorised flights.

Minister Felix said that the U.S. is a sovereign country and has the right to make its decisions pertaining to deportations, but Guyana also has the right to seek to uphold its current travel ban.

“If they make a decision to deport, we have a right, if it is necessary, to show our dissent. We don’t have to agree, but it is their right to make their rules and our right to make our rules,” he said.

Felix said that should it come to the point where Guyana may be receiving deportees, the Ministry of Citizenship will seek to cross that bridge then.

He said: “We will cross that bridge when we get there. It is not something that is so difficult to handle, but we’re not there yet. When we’re there we’ll deal with it.”

As of April 29, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) has reported 490 cases among detainees since the COVID-19 outbreak began, and only about 1,030 tests were conducted on nearly 30,000 ICE detainees nationwide.