THE NEW HUMANITARIAN: What’s happening in Venezuela’s COVID-19 border quarantines? →

After just three weeks, Karla Morales realised her dreams of making it in Colombia were shattered.

As the COVID-19 crisis erupted, the 29-year-old Venezuelan travelled across the border with her husband and their youngest child in search of job opportunities so they could send money back to two other children they left behind in their economically crippled homeland. 

Returning Venezuelan migrants walk along a road outside Bogotá, Colombia. (Steven Grattan)

AL JAZEERA: An SOS: Colombians hang red rags for help amid COVID-19 lockdown →

Hanging from Daniela Castano's window is a red T-shirt draped on an old mop pole.

The piece of red cloth is one of many dotting the buildings of Bogota's working-class neighbourhoods - a symbol of someone in need.

Francy Olaya, 57, stands with her daughter Leidy, 35, outside their home in the Giradot neighbourhood in Bogota, where they have hung a red flag. Photo: Steven Grattan

BBC: Mothers of murdered sons fight for justice in Colombia →

Beatriz Méndez sifts through heaps of yellowed newspaper clippings in her small home in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

She collected them over the last 14 years as testament to her fight for justice after her son, Weimar, and her nephew, Edward, were killed.

Ms Méndez last saw them alive on 12 June 2004. The next time she saw them, they were in a morgue.

Beatriz Mendez at her home in the south of Bogota sifts through heaps of yellowed newspaper clippings she's collected for over the last 14 years as testaments to her fight for justice after the killings of her son. Photo: Steven Grattan

THE GUARDIAN: Returning Venezuelans in squalid quarantine face uncertain future →

When Jhoel Brito headed back to Venezuela last week he sought safe haven from an epoch-making global health emergency that has paralyzed scores of countries and claimed more than 120,000 lives. After losing his job as a butcher in Colombia, the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant believed he would be safer waiting out the coronavirus storm back home. But the reality of his forced homecoming has proved a shock.

A Whatsapp photo shared with by one of the detained Venezuelan migrants in the border town of Ureña. Photograph: Handout

REUTERS: Sex toy sales take off amid Colombia's coronavirus quarantine →

Gerson Monje holds up his cellphone to proudly show off his online sex shop. A red banner reading “sold out!” is plastered across half of the products. While most Colombian businesses suffer during a five-week lockdown meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus, one online industry has seen an explosion in sales in the usually conservative country: sex toys are flying off virtual shelves.

Adriana Marin, worker at the SexoSentido sex shop, cleans and disinfects the products in stock, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bogota, Colombia April 10, 2020. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

THE WASHINGTON POST: Coronavirus lockdowns across Latin America send Venezuelan migrants back to their broken homeland →

José Sanbrano stopped on a roadside in the Colombian capital to catch his breath. The 30-year-old migrant had been walking for 15 days. He had hundreds of miles more to go — uphill, through the Andes — before he would reach the broken homeland he once fled.

Venezuela.

Tony Taborada rests with his pregnant partner outside a gas station in Bogota. They have been walking two days. (Nadège Mazars/for The Washington Post)

AL JAZEERA: Venezuelans face evictions amid Colombia coronavirus quarantine →

Breyan Romero was forced to leave the hostel he was renting in downtown Bogota, unable to pay his daily rent of $3.

The 24-year-old, who uses a walker due to his paralysed legs, arrived two years ago from Zulia State, Venezuela, in search of a better life. He sold biscuits on the streets, and while the days were hard, he was able to make enough to pay his rent and put food on the table.

Breyan Romero was making a living selling biscuits before the coronavirus crisis hit [Nadege Mazars]

OZY: Coronavirus pushes biggest migration in the Americas underground →

When Colombian President Iván Duque’s government closed the country’s border with Venezuela on March 14, its move was aimed at reducing the risk of the coronavirus spreading into the nation from its troubled neighbor. Two weeks later, that decision appears to have spawned a different consequence — merely making it even more dangerous and exploitative for Venezuelan migrants seeking to escape their country.

People coming from Venezuela with protective face masks as a precautionary measure to avoid contracting the novel coronavirus hold their documents on the border at Simon Bolivar International Bridge, in Cucuta, Colombia. SCHNEYDER MENDOZA/AFP VIA GETTY

AL JAZEERA: Fear as Colombia closes border with Venezuela over coronavirus →

Move will push vulnerable Venezuelans to use informal border crossings, making coronavirus fight harder, experts say.

People wearing protective face masks line up to cross the border between Colombia and Venezuela at the Simon Bolivar international bridge, after the WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic, in Cucuta, Colombia [Carlos Eduardo Ramirez/Reuters]

AL JAZEERA: China's strong push into Colombia →

China's interest in what the International Monetary Fund ranks as South America's fastest-growing economy is deepening. Within the last three months, China's Zijin Mining Group Co Ltd bought a gold mine in Colombia, and a consortium led by China Harbor Engineering Co won a contract to build the Bogota metro system.

Colombia's President Ivan Duque shakes hands with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, where Duque went to bolster Chinese demand for his country's agricultural products [File: Andy Wong/Reuters]