As the coronavirus spread and countries began closing their borders, Americans stranded abroad found U.S. Embassies AWOL and began plotting their own escapes — some planned for having to bribe border guards, others paid a private security firm to fly them home — and thousands are still stuck, with no clear way to get home.The State Department didn’t ramp up fast enough to bring Americans stranded by the expanding coronavirus pandemic and its resulting travel bans and communicated poorly once it did, say lawmakers and former State officials — leaving thousands of Americans still stranded overseas to essentially fend for themselves.Advertisement. Two former State Department officials who worked at the agency under both Republican and Democratic administrations agreed that the department’s leadership reacted too slowly to the developing crisis.“I didn’t see the State Department move out sharply on this,” said one of the former officials. “There was a slowness off the mark.”An evacuation of this nature could be ordered by a number of officials, from the secretary down the ranks, and “It just seemed to me that somehow the order to move was not given” in a timely manner, the person said.In a statement, a State Department spokesperson said that the department is 'rising to meet the historic challenge' the pandemic poses, and noted that the government has 'no higher duty than to protect American citizens.'
The agency says it has repatriated more than 9,000 Americans from 28 countries, with 'thousands more in the coming days and weeks.' The spokesperson said State evacuated 800 people in January and February from Wuhan, China and brought home 1,000 Americans from Morocco in March.But several people stranded in various countries over the past two weeks told POLITICO a different story, saying U.S.
The MS Zaandam, a Holland America Line cruise ship with 1,243 passengers and 586 crew members on board, is currently sailing north after being shut out of South American ports over coronavirus.
Embassies were unable to provide them anything beyond basic information for days at a time, and in some cases never responded beyond automated form emails.Melissa Uribe, who is pregnant and was stranded in Guatemala while in need of medical attention, made it home to California late Tuesday after a harrowing week trying to get out. She said the agency's initial response to her and others trapped there was: 'Don't rely on the U.S. Government for help.'
'My mind was blown,” Uribe told POLITICO in an email. “A family member who took us to the airport told us he was so shocked at what we were going through. He, and so many Guatemalans, couldn't believe it because they always held the U.S. In such high regard, as they always seemed to take care of their own.”. After Uribe and her family booked a commercial flight on Eastern Airlines, they heard from the State Department, saying they had been selected for a charter flight, but “after so much misinformation from the embassy, we didn't trust them.”Some of the agency's perceived failures can also be seen as the inevitable result of an unprecedented crisis which has stretched the agency’s resources globally and challenged virtually every aspect of society.“Part of the way that you know that you’re in a crisis is because it’s chaotic,” said another former State official. “If everything was working smoothly, that would just be a very busy day of normal.”For example, the former official said, embassies not answering phones or returning messages, which many stranded Americans reported as a typical result in countries where borders were closed, is to be expected during of a crisis of this scale.The former official said that when an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, the embassy there was besieged by phone calls, thousands in the first hour.“That’s absolutely inevitable.
There’s no way that a normal operation can answer that,” the official said — and answering individual phone calls would not necessarily be the best use of the staff’s time in that moment, regardless.But at least one other aspect of State’s response was more surprising to those who have been in those jobs before.An American Airlines plane earlier this week flew to Peru en route to pick up U.S. Citizens stranded in Lima, but had to turn around after State was unable to secure permission to land from the Peruvian government. According to an email from congressional staff to Americans stuck in Peru, negotiations — which apparently failed — were ongoing while the plane was aloft.“I would say it’s probably unbelievably rare that a plane would be on its way without clearance,” the former official said.Sen. But Americans who were or are stranded abroad also say the agency’s actions and communications have been anything but reassuring.“It was an overwhelming sense of confusion, skepticism, misinformation, fear and frustration,' said Annie Perlick, a nurse who was stuck on a Honduran island, who was one of the 144 U.S.
And Canadian citizens who paid.Perlick said that she only turned to this nontraditional method of transportation after trying to get help from State and entreating her representatives in Congress.
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