U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Georgians and other Americans still overseas during the coronavirus pandemic to “move quickly and directly and efficiently” to return home if they wish to leave.
He said more than 30,000 U.S. citizens have returned home from at least 69 countries, some of them remote places, but that the window is fast closing for repatriating thousands more who are still overseas.
“The conditions in many of these countries are not getting better, and it’s going to become more difficult to execute the mission,” Pompeo said in a conference call with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We’d urge every American who is abroad traveling and wants to get back to move quickly and directly and efficiently,” he said. “Sooner is better, and the restrictions are getting more difficult.”
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Pompeo said at least 409 flights have shipped Americans abroad back to the U.S. and an additional 21,000 are still pending, though he added the numbers fluctuate daily.
“It’s like nothing the State Department has ever done before,” he said. “We still have a big group in front of us, and we still have more people we hear about every day.”
Scattered groups of Georgians have reported widespread problems trying to return home. Several travelers stuck on a Honduran island chartered a private flight that cost more than $1,300 a passenger to get back to metro Atlanta.
And U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s office is working to get travelers back home from Guatemala, Honduras, India, Morocco, Peru and elsewhere, said Casey Black, a spokeswoman for the senator.
Pompeo said most of the flights have been private or commercial, though that’s becoming more difficult as airlines increasingly reduce international service. But he said the Defense Department has also arranged overseas flights to bring back stranded citizens.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said of the process. “What’s the least cost to the American taxpayer, and how can we get our resources there efficiently?”
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