14 migrants get COVID-19 after U.S. deports man with virus

Tamaulipas state officials say migrant deported from Texas entered the shelter without knowing that he had coronavirus.

Sixteen migrants and asylum seekers from several countries have tested positive for coronavirus in Mexico’s northern border state of Tamaulipas, the state government said Monday.

Fourteen of the infected migrants from Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba and Cameroon were staying at a migrant shelter in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. They are in isolation. 

The Tamaulipas state government said a migrant deported from Houston, Texas had entered the same shelter without knowing that he had coronavirus. Migrants now make up about 10 percent of the state’s 193 coronavirus cases.

“The state government, foreseeing the situation of multiple contagions of COVID-19 among the migrant population, has asked the federal government through official channels to transfer out of Tamaulipas the migrants who are stranded on the border,” the state said in a statement.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that more than 100 migrants at 25 detention centres have tested positive for COVID-19. 

Source: Al Jazeera