'They wrote that they didn't want me here and that they were going to kill me.'
Days after recovering from the coronavirus, Bryan snuck into his village in the middle of the night in the back of an ambulance, praying no one in the surrounding community who feared his infection would kill him.
The 30-year-old is not the only one who has been threatened with violence after being deported from the US to Guatemala and accused, sometimes incorrectly, of bringing COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, from abroad. Of the 585 confirmed cases in Guatemala, at least 99 of them were recent deportees from the US.
Guatemala's Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance did not respond to requests for comment about the conditions patients described. But while the threats were flying online, Bryan was stuck at the makeshift hospital in Guatemala City waiting to be cleared by hospital staff, and his wife feared the people posting threats would attack her.
Dr. Justo Solórzano, a child protection specialist in Guatemala for UNICEF, said many recent deportees, including children, have been rejected from their communities, forcing advocates and government officials to try to find alternative housing for them. The number of positive cases among US deportees has resulted in criticism of the Trump administration for not taking enough precautions to avoid the spread of the coronavirus inside ICE detention centers and then exporting the virus to poorer countries.
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