The State Department has told BuzzFeed News the claim that the US was requiring American evacuees in Puerto Rico to pay for their flight and seizing their passports as collateral is incorrect.
The belief that the US was charging people fleeing the wreckage of Hurricane Maria appears to have stemmed from a story from Marketwatch published Thursday morning.
That claim was picked up by The Hill and made its way to Twitter, where the story began to flood the hashtag #PuertoRico.
Puerto Rican evacuees must sign a contract to repay the gov't for airfare AND surrender passports to leave the island. RT this forever.
You don't need a passport to travel to US from Puerto Rico Trump is using passports as collateral for people who can't afford evacuation
Trump's forcing Puerto Ricans to pay all transportation costs for their evacuation, taking passports as collateral https://t.co/4PNfZ4bLFp
The confusion seems to stem from a State Department rule about evacuating Americans from overseas that says evacuees must repay the government for the cost of a commercial flight.
Here's the State Department spokeswoman on Twitter:
.@StateDept is NOT evacuating americans from #PuertoRico -PR is a US territory. State only handles international evacs @thehill @MarketWatch
Garrigus made clear, though, that promissory notes were required from Americans being evacuated from foreign countries affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, like Saint Marteen and Dominica.
