White House pauses removal of detainees to the DRC as Ebola outbreak widens | Ebola
The Trump administration will temporarily halt the sending of refugees to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) amid the escalating Ebola outbreak. reporting It was confirmed by Politico, but experts say the move will not help stop the spread of the disease.
At least one woman remained in limbo after authorities moved her to Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, but said they would not bring her back due to an Ebola travel ban, despite a judge’s order for her to return.
Adriana Zapata, 55, fled Colombia to the United States but was sent to Kinshasa more than a month ago – even though the Democratic Republic of Congo said it could not accommodate her complex medical needs. A U.S. judge ordered him to return to the United States, but American officials say they cannot bring him back because of a travel ban that went into effect Monday.
“I’m really worried about losing him,” said Zapata’s attorney, Lauren O’Neal. said Gothamist. “I don’t want him to die before I can bring him back here.”
Unnamed officials told Politico that immigration agents could come into contact with the virus during trips and that the virus could spread closer to the United States due to Trump’s immigration tactics. But they said the decision was motivated at least in part by legal concerns that being sent to a third country with an active Ebola outbreak could be used in an immigrant’s defense.
“By the government’s own logic, if it’s not safe for people to get there, it’s equally unsafe to send people there,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and the top Ebola response official for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the 2014-2015 outbreak.
As long as the US bans travelers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, “on what grounds would it be safe to deport people there?” Konyndyk asked.
It is unclear what will happen to the refugees who are sent against their will to countries affected by the epidemic or close to the epidemic. According to independent journalist Gillian Brockell, at least 37 people have moved to these countries in recent months. tracks third country removals by the USA.
Brockell suspects that U.S. officials are using the travel ban as an excuse not to extradite Zapata. Sending people in detention centers to African countries far from home is a common threat, Brockell said. “So to publicly take one of their main scare tactics off the table, they will only do that if it helps them in some way.”
The US government had previously evacuated people, including patients with active Ebola cases, from Ebola-affected areas. said former State Department official William Walters, one of the world’s leading experts on high-risk medical evacuations. now an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractorBrockell pointed out.
“The Trump administration can certainly extradite Adriana Zapata to the United States; it is not right to tell the judge that this cannot be done,” he said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said ICE “followed all applicable health and safety rules in conducting removal operations, including those set forth in the U.S. State Department’s travel advisories.” But DHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about Zapata’s return and the organisation’s plans to alienate third countries, including whether flights to Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda would continue during the Ebola outbreak.
Immigration lawyer Camille Mackler said sending migrants to other countries against their will could risk violating international law. “Basically, the United States cannot send people back to places where they will be persecuted, so we export our immigration enforcement.”
There are no official figures, but experts estimate that between 8,000 and 15,000 people flew to third countries.
“We have already seen that people in immigration detention do not receive adequate medical care,” Mackler said. “They don’t get any protection for them and they don’t think about the ripple effect this could have.”
If the epidemic continues to spread, there is a possibility that detainees in affected areas may become ill themselves; If they are then sent back to their countries of origin, they will also bring the virus to South and Central America, where countries have little experience in combating viral hemorrhagic fever.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it has plans to test and trace travelers in the area. The United States announced Thursday that all passengers traveling from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan will be directed to Washington-Dulles international airport for screening.
“The United States is implementing travel precautions to limit risk,” said Satish Pillai, CDC’s Ebola response leader.
Even travelers from places with no known Ebola cases, such as Kinshasa, will be monitored “as the epidemic in the affected area continues to spread,” Pillai said at a news conference Friday.
“Therefore, CDC has initiated entry screening processes that are part of a broader, layered public health approach overall that begins with exit screening, airline disease reporting, and public health monitoring upon arrival,” Pillai said. he said.
Alexandra Phelan, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said such precautions mean it is very unlikely that travelers, including Zapata, brought Ebola to the United States.
Phelan said the “appropriate and equitable process that also protects public health” would be to bring Zapata to the U.S. under the judge’s order and subject him to the same health protocols as returning U.S. citizens and Dulles residents. Phelan added that any high-risk exposure could include quarantine, but “this is unlikely if he remains in Kinshasa, which is not known to be a location of active transmission.”
“If the Trump administration is serious about countering the spread of Ebola, the U.S. government should restore the health-related humanitarian funding it has destroyed across Africa, establish temporary protected status for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan, and halt all deportation flights to the region, including flights containing Latin Americans and other third-country nationals,” said Yael Schacher, director of the Americas and Europe at Refugees International.
