White House pauses removal of detainees to the DRC as Ebola outbreak widens

The Trump administration will temporarily pause the removal of refugees to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a spiraling Ebola outbreak, according to reporting by Politico, but experts say the move won’t help prevent the spread of the disease.

At least one woman is now in limbo after officials moved her to Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, and now say they won’t bring her back because of the Ebola travel ban – despite a judge’s order for her return.

Adriana Zapata, 55, fled Colombia to the US, but she was sent to Kinshasa over a month ago – even though the DRC said it could not care for her complex medical needs. A US judge ordered her return to the US, but American officials are saying they cannot bring her back because of the travel ban instituted on Monday.

“I’m just really worried about losing her,” Zapata’s lawyer, Lauren O’Neal, told the Gothamist. “I don’t want her to die before we can get her back here.”

Immigration agents could come into contact with the virus during the trips, and the virus could spread closer to the US because of Trump’s immigration tactics, unnamed officials told Politico. Yet they said the decision is at least partly motivated by legal concerns – that removal 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 is not safe for people to come from there to here, it is equally unsafe to send people there,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and the top Ebola response official at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) during the 2014-15 outbreak.

As long as the US has a ban on travelers from the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan, “on what grounds could it possibly be safe to deport people there?” Konyndyk asked.

It’s not clear what happens next to refugees who were already moved against their will to countries affected by or near the outbreak. At least 37 people have been moved to these countries in recent months, according to Gillian Brockell, an independent journalist who tracks third-country removals by the US.

Brockell suspects US officials are using the travel ban as an excuse for not returning Zapata. Sending people in detention centers to African nations far from home is a common threat, Brockell said, “so to publicly take one of their main scare tactics off the table, they are only going to do that if it helps them in some way”.

The US government has evacuated people from Ebola-affected regions before – including patients with active Ebola cases. One of the world’s leading experts on high-risk medical evacuations, the former state department official William Walters, is now an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor, Brockell pointed out.

“The Trump administration could absolutely return Adriana Zapata to the US; telling the judge it can’t be done just isn’t true,” she said.

ICE “follows all applicable health and safety guidelines, including those outlined in the US Department of State’s travel advisories, when conducting removal operations,” said a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But the DHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about Zapata’s return and the agency’s third-country removal plans during the Ebola outbreak, including whether flights to Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda would continue.

Sending immigrants against their will to other countries could risk violating international law, said Camille Mackler, an immigration lawyer. “Basically, the US can’t send people back to where they will be persecuted, so we’re exporting our immigration enforcement.”

There are no official numbers, but experts estimate that between 8,000 and 15,000 people have been flown to third countries.

“We’ve already seen that people who are being detained by immigration are not receiving adequate medical care,” Mackler said. “They’re taking no protections for them, and then not thinking about the ripple effect that can have.”

If the outbreak continues expanding, there’s a chance detainees in the affected areas could get sick themselves – and if they were then sent to their countries of origin, they would be bringing the virus to South and Central America, where countries have little experience battling the viral hemorrhagic fever.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it has plans in place to test and monitor passengers from the region. The US announced on Thursday that all passengers traveling from the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan would be diverted to the Washington-Dulles international airport for screening.

“The US is putting in place travel measures to limit risk,” said Satish Pillai, the CDC’s Ebola response lead.

Even passengers from places like Kinshasa, with no known Ebola cases, will be monitored because “the outbreak in the affected area continues to expand”, Pillai said at a press conference on Friday.

“That is why CDC has initiated entry screening processes, which is a part of an overall broader, layered public health approach, starting with exit screening, airline illness reporting and public health monitoring after arrival,” Pillai said.

Measures like these mean it’s very unlikely travelers – including Zapata – will bring Ebola into the United States, said Alexandra Phelan, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The “proper and equitable process that also protects public health” would be to bring Zapata to the US, per the judge’s order, and have her undergo the same health protocols as returning US citizens and residents at Dulles, Phelan said. That could include quarantine if there has been any high-risk exposure – though that’s “unlikely if she has remained in Kinshasa, which is not a known active transmission location”, Phelan added.

“If the Trump administration is serious about countering the spread of Ebola, the US government should restore health-related humanitarian funding it gutted across Africa; designate temporary protected status for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan; and halt all deportation flights to the region – including flights involving Latin Americans and other third country nationals,” said Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International.