'This is a 24/7 job': State Department's playbook for getting stranded Americans home

As the coronavirus spread and nations shut their borders, the State Department hustled to put together practices for bringing Americans home, according to a document that illustrates the tense nature of the massive multi-country effort to help thousands of desperate Americans amid rapidly changing circumstances.

In a step-by-step checklist, obtained by POLITICO, State staff outlined how they had helped Americans stranded in Morocco, where employees at the embassy there worked to charter nine flights over 48 hours starting March 20, before the country unexpectedly closed its borders. The document stands as a sort of playbook for an agency that is continuing to try to return Americans home.

Many of the steps are commonsense: set up a new email inbox for Americans who want to fly home so that they can reach you, create a spreadsheet to track potential passengers, email the citizens a confirmation of their evacuation flight.

But others illustrate the bruising toll on State Department employees, amid rising uncertainty and a difficult diplomatic environment where countries abruptly shut down travel.

"This is a 24/7 job," the document says. It recommends creating a call center and putting together shifts, with a team working the phones even as other staff start checking in passengers at the airport.

Another bullet point outlines the uncertainty faced by the government around these flights. "Expect people to constantly change their mind, and then change it again," the Morocco staff wrote. For their flights, only 50 percent of American citizens who had stated they would leave ultimately came to the airport, according to the document: "We even saw Amcits change their mind at the airport standing there with packed luggage."

The document recommends filling every seat on the plane, including holding it as long as possible while there are empty seats, while firing off tweets and other communications to try to find others to take those seats. "Keep delaying," it says.

And as a last resort, the document notes that they will allow other citizens who have permission to enter the U.S., like Canadians or British, to board — as long as they sign the same promissory note as Americans flying home.

"It would not be helpful to have one of them Tweet, 'Thanks for the free flight, America!'" the document reads.

The State Department said on Sunday that it has now repatriated 22,251 U.S. citizens on more than 230 flights since Jan. 29, and has received nearly 15,000 calls since March 21.

Commercial airlines have been heavily involved in the effort to scoop up stranded Americans.

United Airlines says it’s operated more than 30 repatriation flights to date and brought approximately 4,500 people back to the U.S. The airline says it has an additional ten flights scheduled this week from cities in Honduras, Peru and El Salvador.

American Airlines said it has operated special flights from cities in Honduras, Peru and Brazil to bring people home. Those have included daily flights from Lima from March 27 through today.

Delta Air Lines said it has completed at least 15 repatriation flights to date, including ones from Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, South Korea and the Philippines, as well as a charter flight from Italy. In addition, a spokeswoman said the airline has “about a dozen charters scheduled or under consideration.”

But despite those successes, problems remain in some hot spots.

Sara Goico, a UCLA postdoctoral fellow who has been trying to get out of Iquitos, Peru, for two weeks, said that through miscommunication and a mix-up between the State Department and a nonprofit rescue group called Warrior Angels Rescue, she was left off a State-chartered flight to Miami.

She had registered with the embassy, but the embassy ultimately only contacted Americans who had filled out a separate Google form organized by the little-known nonprofit — which Goico had avoided because of the embassy's warnings against possible scams.

"I am quite disappointed with how the embassy has handled the situation," Goico said in an email to POLITICO. "Every piece of information the embassy has sent me in an email has been either unhelpful or completely wrong."

Frustrated, she's turned to other governments for help: she has been able to get on the list with the Austrian embassy, which is trying to arrange for her to be on a German-organized flight to Lima, where more U.S.-chartered flights are available.

"All of this puts me at a greater risk of getting infected because Lima has the highest amount of COVID-19 in the country," Goico said.

In Guatemala, stranded U.S. citizens continue to look for ways out, including finding drivers to ferry them to the border with Mexico, where they can still get flights back to the U.S.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.