Migrants, deported to Panama under Trump plan, detained in remote jungle camp

Boston Globe

19-02-2025

'It looks like a zoo; there are fenced cages,' said one deportee, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, after arriving at the camp following a four-hour drive from Panama City. 'They gave us a stale piece of bread. We are sitting on the floor.'
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The group includes eight children, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the record. Lawyers have said it is illegal to detain people in Panama for more than 24 hours without a court order.
The Panamanian government has not made an official announcement about the transfer to the jungle camp.
In a broadcast interview Wednesday with the local news program Panamá En Directo, the country's security minister, Frank Ábrego, did not discuss the move. But he said that migrants were being held by Panama 'for their own protection,' and because officials 'need to verify who they are.'
The transfer is the latest move in a weeklong saga for a group of about 300 migrants who arrived in the United States hoping to seek asylum. The group was sent to Panama, which has agreed to aid President Donald Trump in his plan to deport millions of migrants living in the US without legal permission.
The agreement is part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to export some of its most difficult migration challenges to other nations. The United States, for varying reasons, cannot easily deport people to countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and China, but by applying intense pressure, it has managed to persuade Panama to take some of them.
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After being sent to Panama, the deported migrants are no longer subject to US law.
Costa Rica is also taking some deportees, including migrants originally from Central Asia and India, and has said it plans to repatriate them. A flight from the United States is expected to arrive in Costa Rica on Thursday.
Upon arrival in Panama City last week, the 300 or so migrants were taken to a downtown hotel, called the Decapolis, and barred from leaving, several of them told The New York Times in calls and text messages. A lawyer seeking to represent many of them, Jenny Soto Fernández, was blocked at least four times from visiting them in the hotel, she said.
At the hotel, the United Nations International Organization for Migration has been speaking with migrants about their options, according to the government, and offering flights to their home countries to those who want them.
Some, including a group of Iranian Christians and a man from China, told the Times that they risk reprisals if returned to their native countries and have refused to sign documents that would pave the way for their repatriation.
Under Iranian law, converting from Islam is considered apostasy and is a crime punishable by death.
On Tuesday morning, an article published by the Times attracted attention to the migrants' situation, and members of the Panamanian news media began surrounding the hotel.
That night, guards at the hotel told people to pack their bags, said Ghasemzadeh, one of the Christian converts from Iran. Several buses arrived, and guards led them aboard, as witnessed by a reporter working for the Times. Then the bus traveled out of Panama City, east and then farther east, to the province of Darién.
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Two migrants used their cellphones to share their real-time location with the Times, allowing reporters to track their movements.
On the bus, at least one woman cried, according to a photograph sent by a person on the bus.
The camp where the 100 or so migrants will stay is called San Vicente and sits at the end of a jungle, also called the Darién, which links Panama to Colombia. The camp was built years ago as a stopover point for migrants coming north from Colombia through the Darién jungle and into Panama, a harrowing part of the journey north to the United States.
Now the Panamanian government is using it for deportees.
On Tuesday, Ábrego told reporters at a news conference that 170 of the 300 or so migrants had volunteered to be sent back to their countries of origin, journeys that would be arranged by the International Organization for Migration.
He described the decision to hold the migrants as part of an accord with the United States.
'What we agreed with the United States government is that they remain and are in our temporary custody for their protection,' he said.
On Wednesday, he said that 12 people from Uzbekistan and India had been repatriated with the help of the International Organization for Migration.
Officials also said Wednesday that one of the migrants in their custody, a woman from China, had escaped from the hotel.
In a message posted to the social platform X, the country's migration service asked for help in finding her, saying authorities feared she would fall into the hands of human traffickers.
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'As a State security entity,' authorities wrote on X, 'our commitment is to combat illegal migration' while complying with 'national and international principles and regulations on human rights.'
The Panamanian government has previously said the migrants had no criminal records.
On Wednesday morning, from the Darién region, Ghasemzadeh described a sweltering encampment, overrun with cats and dogs.
Then, she sent a text message saying that authorities were confiscating all phones. Her last words: 'Please try to help us.'
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