Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

In mid-April, the authorities said that seventy-four cases had originated from just two deportation flights. US officials considered this an exaggeration and sent scientists from the CDC to conduct tests. The results confirmed the Guatemalan government’s analysis: when twelve deportees were selected at random, they all tested positive. By the end of the month, roughly 20 percent of the nearly seven hundred confirmed cases of COVID in Guatemala were people who had been deported from the US. “We must not stigmatize,” Monroy said. “But I have to speak clearly. The arrival of deportees who have tested positive has really increased the number of cases.” The United States, he added, had become “the Wuhan of the Americas.”