With more than 220 communities across 10 states in Mexico closing their borders to outsiders due to fear of the coronavirus, even some returning residents are being turned away.

Such was the case for a woman in Guerrero who traveled from her hometown of Marquelia to seek medical treatment for her infant daughter in Mexico City and was not allowed to return home.

Lizeth Ariana Camacho and her husband and three children left the town of about 12,000 in March because their 3-month-old daughter needed heart surgery in the nation’s capital, where rates of infection are more than four times higher than the national average.

The family was stopped at a coronavirus checkpoint upon trying to return to the town, where Ariana says they were treated like “dogs,” and asked to self-quarantine elsewhere for 14 days before they would be allowed to go home. 

Ariana says she tried to reason with town officials, saying the hospital would have never released her baby daughter to the family if they were infected, but the townspeople weren’t budging on their decision. 

They first took refuge in a school then, with all three kids and suitcases in tow, Camacho said via Facebook posts, the family was made to walk for more than an hour along the beach under the hot sun to reach a family member’s home which was under construction and had no electricity or clean water. Later, a woman who runs a hostel let them stay in one of her rooms and gave them food.

The president of Guerrero’s Human Rights Commission, Ramón Navarrete Magdaleno, said that his organization would be looking into the situation as a possible violation of the family’s human rights. 

Guerrero currently has 129 positive cases of the coronavirus and 14 people have died.

Source: Milenio (sp)