The US Government will send dozens of deportees to Jamaica within the next two weeks.  And Jamaica has no choice but to accept after President Donald Trump signed an order last week that imposes visa sanctions on countries that refuse to accept the deportees.

  Jamaica’s Minister of National Security Dr Horace Chang said that a batch of deportees was scheduled to arrive in the island earlier this month but was delayed after “discussions” with US authorities.

“We have been able to delay the entrance of a number of deportees, but we will have to accept them at some point. In fact, I expect that we will have to accept them within a week or two,” Chang told the Jamaica Gleaner Newspaper while noting that the  US “usually sends us between 50 and 60 every two months or so”. The deportees will have to be quarantined upon entry into the island which has reported  73 confirmed cases of  COVID-19  and four deaths.

The entry of deportees into the country puts Jamaica in a quandary.

“We are having a serious challenge. We were one of the first countries in the region to close our borders. Therefore, to break it open for deportees would pose a challenge to our entire system,”  Chang told the Gleaner summing up Jamaica’s pitch to the US for the first postponement.

“Tens of thousands of removable aliens have been released into communities across the country, solely because their home countries refuse to accept their repatriation. Many of these aliens are criminals who have served time in our federal, state, and local jails,” Trump said in his Executive Order on Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.

“The presence of such individuals in the United States and the practices of foreign nations that refuse the repatriation of their nationals are contrary to the national interest.”