© Jessica Blough/Associated Press

The U.S. military on Friday sent aircraft to pick up Americans who were stranded abroad because of sealed borders to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, a U.S. defense official said.

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The military sent C-130s to both Morocco and Peru, the official said. A C-17 arrived in Honduras to pick up the U.S. women’s football team, the Pentagon said, as American tourists there still faced uncertainty on how to get home.

Many countries closed borders as the coronavirus crisis developed, prohibiting commercial airline flights in or out. Thousands of Americans remain trapped in South America, Morocco and elsewhere, unable to get home—and upset at Washington’s response as European countries, Mexico and Israel quickly moved to evacuate their citizens.

Some have linked the State Department’s difficulties in repatriating Americans to the departures of many diplomats who have resigned or said that they were forced out since President Trump took office. A senior department official said Friday the “unprecedented” work is being undertaken even as U.S. diplomats around the world are authorized to return home amid the global pandemic.

“The President has spent the past three years hollowing out the State Department and the past three months denying the basic facts of the coronavirus crisis,” said a senior senate aide who works on foreign policy. “Now, with thousands of Americans trapped overseas, no one should be surprised that the Trump administration has been absolutely unprepared to respond.”





Many Americans are still unsure when they will get home. Rich Levering, a Philadelphia native who traveled to Peru with his fiancée, Sara Schuenemann, and their dog, said U.S. officials haven’t advised him of the military flights. He had earlier stopped by the U.S. embassy in Peru’s capital, Lima, but didn’t receive help.



Alyssa Indri, a 27-year-old speech pathologist from Florida, is stuck in the Peruvian city of Cusco. She says she has received little information or assistance from the U.S. Embassy.

“It is honestly disappointing, sad and scary,” Ms. Indri said Friday. “It is just our friends and family comforting us at this point.”

Israel already sent flights to evacuate young tourists from Peru who flock to the country to visit the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.

In Germany, the foreign office has chartered planes from several carriers including Lufthansa, Condor, and TUI and began shuttling more than 100,000 German tourists home who were trapped in vacation spots such as Greece, Egypt, Morocco and the Dominican Republic. The so-called “Air Bridge” began flying German tourists home on Wednesday, and by Friday 96,000 German citizens had been flown home on around 100 special flights, the foreign office said Friday.

The U.K. evacuated more than 8,000 citizens on 45 flights from Morocco in three days after negotiating with the Moroccan government to allow an extension to its border closure. Americans in Morocco said they besieged the U.S. Embassy with what they say were unanswered calls and emails.

Robert Collar, a U.S. student, made it out of Morocco on one of those British chartered flights, following what he described as a last-minute taxi ride from Casablanca to Marrakesh. The Ryanair flight landed in London, where Mr. Collar got a flight to California after being denied entry by Canadian officials onto a flight to Montreal, where he currently studies.

“To be clear, the Ryanair flight only happened as a result of the efforts of the U.K. government,” he said over Facebook messenger. “The Canadian and American governments have been late to the game.”

Tessa Matsis Smith, from California, made it out of Morocco after catching a plane arranged by the U.K. She said people lining up for those flights were desperate.

“People are screaming at each other to get to the back of the line,’ Ms. Smith wrote in her journal.

Ms. Smith and her party made it onto one of the planes that the U.K. had arranged and that a friend in Sacramento had booked for them for $418 dollars a ticket to a London airport. When it took off, “the whole plane was cheering, and I had tears rolling down my face,” she said.

The following day, on Friday, the U.S. Embassy sent an email to Americans who were still left in Morocco, saying they were now chartering their own flights from British Airways, who would fly to London and then on to one of 10 U.S. cities for $1,450 for a one-way ticket. Late Friday, the Embassy tweeted out: Seats are STILL AVAILABLE on today’s last flight from #Marrakesh to #London

Simon Bones, a 35-year-old electrical engineer from Houston, also hopes to get home soon after scuba diving off the coast of Honduras’s Roatan Island in the Caribbean.



Mr. Bones credits the local governor with working to get him and his friends back home, instead of the U.S. government. Mr. Bones said the governor’s office contacted tourists to collect their flight information and reached out to airline companies to urge them to seek a waiver from the Honduran government to allow flights to repatriate Americans.

“He’s been working tirelessly all day, doing live Facebook feeds and creating WhatsApp groups,” Mr. Bones said of the governor. “The State Department’s response was very slow. And even at this point I’m not sure if they’ve done a whole lot.”

Washington’s handling of the ordeal has led other Americans to seek their own way home. Some tourists in Honduras said they had been trying to organize to charter their own flights, willing to pay about $1,000 each for a seat on a 150-passenger plane or $3,000 for an eight-person private jet.

Daniel Villarreal, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen in Peru, is banking on Mexico, not the U.S., to get home to Texas. He is hoping to catch a chartered flight organized by Mexico, which has already returned 1,153 citizens from different countries, including over 700 from Peru.

“U.S. has disappointed,” he wrote in a text message from a bus that the Mexican embassy sent to Cusco to pick him and his daughter up. He hopes to fly from Peru to Mexico City, and then make his way to Texas. “I’m still not out of the woods.”

Write to Ryan Dube at ryan.dube@dowjones.com and Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com