Thirty Migrants Repatriated to El Salvador and Honduras

A number of migrants were returned to their home countries in September through assistance from the International Organization for Migration. A release from the IOM Belize office says that thirty migrants, including ten unaccompanied minors who were transiting Belize on their way north voluntarily returned to El Salvador and Honduras. Twenty-five of them were considered “irregular” but allowed to return through the humanitarian corridor under the Global Impact for Migration. The IOM says since June 2020, this humanitarian project has helped almost two hundred migrants from Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to return voluntarily to their countries of origin. The migrants were a combination of people with an irregular status in the Belize for more than three years, those who were stranded by the pandemic, or those who withdrew from the asylum-seeking process. Before leaving Belize, the returnees received fit-to-travel medical check-ups, and those that were not fully vaccinated were swabbed for COVID-19.