MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FLA. (WSVN) - South Florida families stuck around the world want nothing more than to be able to fly back home, but many of them have no clue what to do, and they said the U.S. State Department is not helping at all.
Ralph Rico, his wife, and their two young children flew into Lima, Peru last Friday.
Now they’re stuck, flights going out of Peru have been cancelled, and they cannot return home to Homestead.
“I feel abandoned by the government,” said Rico. “You’re telling me the most powerful government with all the resources in the world can’t come and get 1,300 Americans and bring them back home? It’s pretty frustrating. We called the U.S. Embassy here, and it is like crickets. You get no response, nothing.”
The children, in the meantime, feel frustrated.
“I want to go home,” Rico’s young son said.
Rico said what is more pressing than returning home is that the pharmacies are closed, and he’s quickly running out of desperately needed medication.
“They put me on medication ‘cause I had a mini-stroke ‘cause my blood pressure got up to 265 over, like, 175,” he said. “I was hospitalized for a couple of days. I need that medication.”
Rico is one of the at least hundreds of Americans stuck in Peru after the country’s president declared a state of emergency and closed the border.
Some of them have joined a Facebook group called Americans Stuck in Peru, where they’re posting messages begging for help.
President Donald Trump said he will try to get the Americans stranded there, like Rico and his family, back home.
“We’re working on taking care of that with the military,” Trump said. “We’re looking into an evacuation. We’re trying to get them out.”
But it’s not just Peru.
Frances Anestiades is home in Miami Lakes while her two daughters and five grandchildren are stuck in Ecuador after their flight back to South Florida was cancelled.
“I want them here,” Anestiades said. “They call the embassy, and the embassy says, ‘Oh, call the carrier.’ Nobody is helping them.”
More than just seeing them again face-to-face, Anestiades wants her family home so her 7-year-old grandson Adam can get his autism medicine refilled. After Friday, he won’t have any medication left.
“They don’t carry that medicine in Ecuador,” Anestiades said. “Some senators have written the state department asking them to fix this problem, and I hope the state department listens and does this quickly.”
The state department said if the families stuck abroad cannot get a commercial flight back home, they will need to hunker down where they are.
Lauren Davenport and Daniel Fernandez returned from sightseeing in the Sahara Desert to find out they could not leave Morocco.
“We got internet and found out that we were stuck because Morocco closed its borders in under 48 hours,” Davenport said.
“Us, like many Americans here who are stranded, have gone to the U.S. Embassy,” Fernandez said. “Some people have even spent the nights at the gates trying to get in. They haven’t been accepted.”
The two said they do not know when they will be able to fly back to Florida, and they said the state department has not been answering.
“The government can send money for these people who are stranded, medication, so if they cannot get us flights, OK, but give us the support we need to hunker down,” Davenport said.
The U.S. State Department has not responded to 7News’ request for comment on both the president’s comments and the South Florida cases.
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