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Atlantic
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
‘All They Want Is America. All They Have Is Panama.'
The Decapolis Hotel advertises 'spacious suites & ocean views' in a business area in Panama City. The glass tower is also one of the few hotels in the city that can accommodate 299 people on short notice. When three planes carrying non-Panamanian deportees arrived in mid-February from the United States, the Decapolis redirected its guests to partner hotels and turned over its trendy lobby to armed security personnel, who ensured that no one could get in or out. Comfortable rooms were repurposed as prison cells, with police officers stationed in the hallways to ensure that people left only for meals. Still, the migrants managed to communicate with journalists by holding written messages up to the windows. One Iranian woman wrote HELP US in lipstick on the glass. These were the first migrants Donald Trump sent away in a third-country deportation agreement. Some had intended to apply for asylum in the United States—a right enshrined in U.S. and international law. But Trump has suspended the asylum process as part of his immigration crackdown. Many of the 299 people shipped off to Panama—some without even knowing where the planes they'd boarded were bound—now find themselves in a dangerous purgatory. Some don't feel they can return to their countries of origin, but also don't wish to stay in Panama, or don't trust that their asylum pleas will be given due consideration there. Inconveniently, the U.S. planes arrived in Panama at a moment when the country's leader was keen on reducing immigration. President José Raúl Mulino campaigned last year on building a Trumpian border wall. But when Trump started threatening to seize the Panama Canal, Mulino sought to placate him, even if that meant putting Trump's anti-immigration agenda before his own. Mulino sought to reassure the public that the migrants' stay in Panama was essentially a long layover on the way to deportation: 'We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible.' Government officials emphasized that the migrants were ' in transit,' just like the ships passing through the Panama Canal. But Mulino has said on other occasions that international law would be respected, and that no one would be forced to return to a country where they didn't feel safe. In mid-March, I went to Panama to find out what might become of the migrants who were still there—those who, politicians kept saying, are in transit, but who seem to have nowhere else to go. In the early days after the planes' arrival, some of the migrants told me, staffers from the United Nations International Organization for Migration showed up at the hotel and paid each person a visit. According to those I spoke with, the IOM staffers told them that they could either fly home right away on a commercial airline or wait to be deported by the Panamanian authorities. More than half of the migrants signed repatriation documents and flew to their countries of origin, such as India and Uzbekistan. The Panamanian authorities and the IOM called these returns ' voluntary.' 'IOM does not carry out forced returns or coerce people to voluntarily depart,' an IOM spokesperson told me. 'Our role is limited to assisting those who choose to return so they may do so safely.' But how well the migrants understood their options is not clear. A Chinese man who identified himself as Xu told me that a woman he'd met at the hotel had texted him from the Istanbul airport. (Xu asked me to withhold his full name so Chinese officials wouldn't know his location.) She told him that she had agreed to repatriate only because she thought she had no choice. When she landed in Istanbul for a layover, she refused to board the connecting flight to China. Then she learned that the people who hadn't signed the repatriation documents had stayed in Panama. She asked Xu if he could talk with someone to arrange her return. Xu wasn't able to help her, and the last time I talked with him, he said that the woman had spent five days in the Istanbul airport before making it to another country, and that she didn't want to talk with reporters. (The IOM spokesperson declined to comment on the woman's case.) Staff from Panama's National Refugee Office visited the Decapolis and invited the 100 or so remaining migrants to apply for asylum. But the government's public messaging had given them little reason to believe the offer was sincere. On February 19, soon after the migrants landed in Panama, Security Minister Frank Ábrego had declared at a press conference: 'At no point will Panama offer asylum to any of these people.' Hardly any of the migrants made claims at first. Still, five women from Cameroon and one from Ghana decided to take advantage of the opportunity. 'America doesn't want us and sent us here,' one of them told me. 'Let's stay here.' Asylum decisions usually take years, but an initial decision as to whether their cases were eligible to move forward would take about two weeks from the asylum hearing, they were told. In fact, it came in two days: All six applications were refused. (The national refugee agency, known by its Spanish acronym as ONPAR, did not respond to my request for interviews or comment.) One of the women was a 32-year-old who fled Cameroon amid fighting last November. She asked me to withhold her name so that assailants in her home country wouldn't be able to locate her. In her asylum hearing, she said that police officers had entered her house and raped her in front of her siblings, and that the police had burned her whole village. But she also said she hoped to work in Panama, because she was 'the only one able to send money to her family.' In the refusal letter, the agency argued on the basis of these words that she was an economic migrant and therefore not in need of asylum. She and the other remaining migrants were transported from the Decapolis to a camp in San Vicente, in the Darién Gap, the same jungle many of them had crossed by foot on their journey to the United States. They spent three weeks there, amid filth and mosquitos, in unrelenting heat—and without access to lawyers or phones, according to the migrants I spoke with as well as a Human Rights Watch report. Then Panamanian officials came and told them they were free to leave. They were given permits that allowed them to live, but not work, in Panama for 90 days. All they had to do was sign a document certifying that the Panamanian authorities had treated them well and another agreeing to the terms of the 90-day permit. According to a lawyer who has worked with this group since, some at first refused to sign—they had questions about what the permit entailed—but were pressured into doing so under threat of deportation. (Panama's security ministry declined to comment on the claim that migrants were pressured to sign.) Then they boarded buses that would take them back to Panama City. The first two buses dropped the migrants off in the parking lot of a shopping mall late on March 8. UNICEF staffers were there waiting for the families with children, to bring them to a hotel. The rest were on their own. Some had been in touch with Caitlyn Yates, a blond, bespectacled American who'd moved to Panama as a doctoral student to study the migration of Asians and Africans through the Darién Gap to North America. When Yates found out that some of her research subjects were on their way to Panama City, she messaged the Panamanian lawyer Victor Atencio, who was also following the migrants' situation closely. Yates and Atencio arrived at the parking lot less than an hour after the migrants, ready to help. The migrants didn't know it, but Atencio was probably the reason they'd been allowed to leave the Darién Gap. A robust, buttoned-up man of 50, he had read about the migrants in The New York Times. He'd filed a habeas corpus petition that the Panamanian government had ignored. Then he sued Panama before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, asking the court to set some 'precautionary measures': for the migrants to be set free, communication with lawyers to be allowed, and deportation to be deferred. Several legal organizations, including the Global Strategic Litigation Council, joined the suit. The day before Panama's deadline to respond to the court, it released the migrants and gave them the 90-day permits. According to GSLC's lawyers, the Panamanian government claimed that it had not mistreated the migrants or held them incommunicado. The human-rights commission eventually declined to set the precautionary measures, but reminded Panama to follow international law. By the time the buses arrived that March night, only a chicken joint and a McDonald's remained open in the mall's food court. Yates bought everyone a meal as Atencio called hotels in the city to find one with availability. Together, they stopped taxis one by one, until there were enough to go to the hotel in a caravan. Samin Haider, a 22-year-old Pakistani, would later describe that night to me as the first time he'd felt hope after arriving in Panama. Yates and Atencio weren't the only ones who showed the migrants kindness. There was the McDonald's cashier who offered them free ice cream, the mall employee who allowed the food court to stay open late, and the taxi drivers who didn't want to be paid. In mid-March, I visited Hogar Luisa, a two-story house owned by a Catholic charity that Yates had approached and that now sheltered about a dozen of the migrants. Many more were sleeping at a school gym repurposed into a camp by Fe y Alegría, another Catholic charity Yates had enlisted. The migrants were finally free to come and go as they pleased, but so were reporters. They were a bit tired of us. 'Why do you ask so many questions?' a Nigerian woman asked me, laughing. 'We all have the same story.' She asked me to withhold her name out of fear of reprisals against her son, who is still in Nigeria. She said she descends from a long line of priestesses in the local religion of her home region, but she didn't want to be one herself. Instead, she married a Christian and converted to Christianity. When her grandmother, the 'priestess of the shrine,' found out, she pledged to kill her in punishment. An Iranian woman I met had also converted to Christianity, in a Muslim country where apostasy can be punishable by death. (She asked to remain anonymous to protect her Christian relatives in Iran, and in case she is forced to return.) She'd owned a gym and was married to an electrical engineer. The police learned that the couple were hosting Christian services at their house, and so they'd fled. A young Pakistani man named Syed Saqlain Badshah told me he'd led student protests in Parachinar in 2017. He'd been hiding from the Pakistani Taliban ever since. A woman named Dora Zhou didn't want to tell me why she and her two teenage daughters had left China. 'It's too painful,' she wrote on her phone. 'I had no choice but to leave.' I spent perhaps the most time with a 21-year-old woman from Afghanistan who asked to be identified only by her middle name, Serwarah, out of fear of retaliation against her relatives still in the country. She grew up in Maymana, a small city in Faryab province, near the country's northern border with Turkmenistan. As a girl she'd read Napoleon Hill's bootstrapping best seller from 1937, Think and Grow Rich, and she'd planned to study accounting in college and launch her own clothing brand. That was before the Taliban took over. Then those avenues all closed, and her grandmother told her that a Talib with two wives who was many decades older had requested her hand in marriage. She'd known this man all her life—he was her mother's distant cousin—and she wondered when he'd begun thinking of her that way. To escape this marriage, Serwarah fled Afghanistan in 2021, when she was 17. She settled first in Iran. From there, she tried to cross into Turkey by foot, only to be stopped at the Turkish border and raped by a Turkish border-police officer. She was sent back to Iran. In 2023, she was accepted to Near East University, in Northern Cyprus, one of the few places in Europe where Afghan nationals can get visas on arrival. But officials at Ercan Airport refused to admit her. She decided to make her way to the United States. From the September 2022 issue: I smuggled my laptop past the Taliban so I could write this story Serwarah acquired a fake visa for Brazil, where she landed in November 2024, and from there she took buses, trekked the Darién Gap, and took more buses all the way to the United States. Somewhere along the way, she learned that in her absence, the Talib had requested to marry her little sister. She thought about returning and marrying him so that her sister would be spared. But her favorite uncle told her over the phone, If you come back, the Taliban will stone you to death. And he'll still marry your sister. The night Serwarah left Afghanistan, her sister had insisted she take one thing with her: their great-grandmother's ring, a ruby surrounded by tiny Afghan emeralds. It's the only possession she has kept—she attached it to her bra strap so it wouldn't get lost or stolen and told herself she'd put it on her finger when she reached America and applied for asylum. When I met her in Panama, Serwarah was living in a shelter, but otherwise seemed in every way like the 21-year-old she was: She spent her days texting her boyfriend, an Afghan she'd met working in a perfumery in Iran, and taking the bus to the mall to buy makeup with money her uncle sent. The heads of the charities hosting the migrants have years of experience. Panama is, after all, home to the Darién Gap, the treacherous stretch of jungle that separates South and Central America, which thousands of migrants have crossed by foot. But the migrants sent by plane from the United States presented challenges that even these professionals had never encountered, they told me. From the September 2024 issue: Seventy miles in hell Father Marco Tulio Gómez, the director of Fe y Alegría, and Jorge Ayala, of Hogar Luisa, normally work alongside government agencies. Both charities reached out to officials to talk about getting work permits for the migrants, and both told me that their calls went unanswered. The Apostolic Nunciature to Panama, the Pope's diplomatic mission in the country, also tried establishing contact with the authorities to no avail. Ayala told me he thought the Panamanian government might be putting off any decisions until it knows whether the Trump administration plans to send more migrants. Father Gómez told me he was accustomed to working with migrants who were on their way north. 'They still had a goal,' he said. Many of those flown to Panama from the United States, by contrast, seem not to fully understand that America is, for now, not an option. Ayala is still trying to get them work permits, but he told me that most of them don't really want to stay in Panama. He worried that they would try their luck again crossing the U.S. border. 'Between eyebrow and eyebrow, all they have is thoughts of going back,' Ayala said. 'All they want is America. All they have is Panama.' The group of lawyers that joined Atencio's lawsuit went on to file another lawsuit over Panama's treatment of migrants. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights could take years to make a decision on it. The new lawsuit charges that Panama has not respected the rights of the migrants to seek asylum. Among other claims, it alleges that the Panamanian police obstructed some migrants from applying, and that those who did apply—the six women from Cameroon and Ghana—had no way to seek legal counsel, received immediate denials, and were told by Panamanian authorities not to appeal. 'Everything indicates that the process sought to discourage access to protection rather than guarantee it,' Silvia Serna, one of the lawyers on the suit, told me. After the lawsuits were filed—the lawyers suggest because they were filed—those migrants who wished to seek asylum were better able to do so. At least three more have been denied, and no one has received a positive answer yet. But the national refugee agency has called some migrants back for interviews, suggesting that their cases may be receiving appropriate consideration. Whether or not they can, however, very few of the migrants seem to want to apply for asylum in Panama. Ayala knows of only nine between the two shelters who have done so. Those I spoke with told me that they thought their claims would be pointless, and that anyway, they didn't want to live in Panama. 'I don't trust anyone in Panama,' Narges, a reclusive Iranian woman, said when I asked her why she didn't want to apply for asylum. (Another Christian convert, she asked me to omit her last name to protect her relatives in Iran.) 'But do you have any other place to go?' I pressed. 'I don't trust anyone in Panama,' she said again. After the 90-day permit expires, Panama may well deport those who never sought asylum. 'The fundamental framing of this permit was as a deferred deportation,' Ian Kysel, a co-founder of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, told me. And yet, most of the people I spoke with in March either didn't understand this or had other plans they didn't share with me. When I spoke with migrants still in the shelters just this week, they told me that dozens had left since I was last there. Some, Serwarah texted me, have made it to Mexico. The last day I went to the Fe y Alegría camp was sunny, with a nice breeze. Nigerian and Ghanaian women were braiding one another's hair under a tree, blasting Afrobeat. Eritreans and Ethiopians were playing Uno on plastic dining tables. Chinese kids had come to visit from the hotel and were running around, hiding behind some of the mattresses on the gym floor. Serwarah wasn't there—she was staying at Hogar Luisa—but other Afghans had gathered around her closest friend in Panama, Suraiya Hussaini, a 25-year-old whose brother, Ali, had stayed behind in an ICE detention center and was now being deported to Afghanistan. As everyone around her looked forward to movie night, Suraiya looked numb. Serwarah, who heard the news from other Afghans, kept calling to ask for updates, but Suraiya had stopped answering her phone. Anxieties about deportation, which hadn't troubled Serwarah and other Afghans for a few days, had returned with vivid intensity, she later told me. Before I left Panama, I attended one of President Mulino's Thursday press conferences in Palacio de las Garzas, the presidential office and residence. I asked him whether the migrants would be able to stay in Panama once their 90-day humanitarian permits expired in June. 'I haven't considered this,' Mulino answered. 'The idea is that they leave before.' 'And they do want to leave,' he added. 'They come from countries very, very far away.'
Newsweek
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
'Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened'—the US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama
I went to Panama recently to talk to people the Trump administration had deported there. People are normally deported to their home countries, but none of the 299 people expelled in February were Panamanians. They came from Iran, Russia, China, Eritrea, Cameroon, Afghanistan, and other countries with serious human rights problems. Held for weeks in incommunicado detention, 180 opted to return to their home countries, but their repatriation can hardly be called voluntary. We interviewed 48 of the people who refused to go and are now stuck in limbo in Panama. One of them was 28-year-old Sara (a pseudonym), who fled abuse in Iran and turned to the United States out of desperation and hope, only to have her dreams of freedom and safety dashed and her trauma deepen. She is a Christian convert from a country where converts to Christianity are subjected to serious human rights violations and can even be sentenced to death and where the authorities consistently fail to protect women against violence. After fleeing from Iran to Turkey, her father and uncle pursued her there; she felt she had no choice but to flee Turkey. Migrants deported from the U.S. place papers with a written message in the window of the Decapolis Hotel where they are temporarily staying in Panama City, February 18, 2025. Migrants deported from the U.S. place papers with a written message in the window of the Decapolis Hotel where they are temporarily staying in Panama City, February 18, 2025. ARNULFO FRANCO/AFP via Getty Images The only country willing to give her a tourist visa was Brazil, where she had no connections or familiarity. She traveled through the dangers of the Darién Gap northward to Mexico. There, she made an appointment to apply for asylum in the United States using CBP One, a phone application established by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to provide people like her a safe, orderly, and legal pathway to seek asylum. She showed me her appointment slip for 4:30 pm on January 31, 2025, at the Nogales, Arizona port of entry. She could have tried crossing the border without permission before President Donald Trump's inauguration, but she waited, as she was promised, to enter legally. On Jan. 20, by executive order, Trump cancelled her appointment, and shut down CBP One. That same day a flurry of executive orders closed down refugee resettlement and other regular pathways for protection. Trump proclaimed an "invasion" of "illegal aliens" at the southern border, claiming authority to explicitly exclude people from the right to seek asylum if doing so would permit their continued presence in the United States. Trump's proclamation purports to cancel the asylum provision in U.S. law, which guarantees the right to seek asylum to anyone arriving at the border regardless of their status or method of arrival. She did not want to cross the border without permission but reluctantly made the decision to cross irregularly on February 4 as the only possible way to seek asylum in the United States. She did not try to evade capture but waited on the other side of the wall for the Border Patrol. The agent handcuffed her and put her on a bus. She kept waiting for the chance to tell any official her story. "No U.S. official at any point asked me any questions," Sara told Newsweek. "I had no interview in the United States. I talked to no lawyers, no officials. I was given no document to sign. I wanted to become a refugee, but they never talked to me." The Border Patrol detained her in San Diego. She was told she was being transferred to Texas, but was ushered onto a military plane, which landed in Panama five hours later. The next three weeks were a nightmare—a week of incommunicado detention in a hotel in Panama City, where a U.N. agency told her that her only option was to return "voluntarily" to her home country, followed by two weeks in a sweltering, filthy detention center back in Darién, then suddenly bused back to Panama City, dumped on the streets, and told she had 30 days to leave the country. The permit has since been extended for another 60 days; she remains in Panama, but the clock is ticking. Despite their varied backgrounds, all of the people interviewed had this in common—each had crossed into the United States after January 20; all wanted to seek asylum in the U.S. and expressed to us a fear of return to their home countries; none had an asylum pre-screening "credible fear" interview; none saw an immigration judge or were given so much as a slip of paper saying why and under what legal basis they were being removed from the United States; in fact, none knew they were being sent to Panama. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration should "facilitate the return" of a man wrongfully deported to El Salvador. But there are at least hundreds of others, among them the 299 sent to Panama and 200 to Costa Rica, who have been deported without basic due process and denied the right to seek asylum. The U.S. should also facilitate the return of the young woman I interviewed and make good on her long overdue appointment. Bill Frelick is the director of Human Rights Watch Refugee and Migrant Rights Division and the author of an upcoming report on the expulsions. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
CNN
22-02-2025
- Politics
- CNN
‘We are in danger': Migrants deported from US were locked in hotel and held at remote camp in Panama, lawyers say
For days, they say they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world. Nearly 300 migrants from Asia, all deported by the US, were held there by Panamanian authorities who agreed to take them in and eventually repatriate them. It's part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, which it has pressured Latin American nations to help with. Some migrants have been transferred to a remote camp at the edge of a jungle that few can access, lawyers representing some of the migrants told CNN. Now, they wait to learn if they will be sent back to the countries they fled or to another nation willing to receive them. But the conditions they have faced are distressing and may have violated their rights, the lawyers said. The migrants started arriving in Panama City last week after being deported from the US. Some didn't even know they were being flown to another country until they actually landed in Panama, according to attorney Ali Herischi, who said 'they were told they're going to Texas.' The migrants were then sent to the Decapolis Hotel and forced to stay there for days without stepping foot outside. Jenny Soto Fernández, a Panamanian lawyer who represents about 24 migrants from India and Iran, said her clients were living in isolation, fear and uncertainty. She said a lot of them didn't know their rights and weren't given orders of removal upon being deported. They also face language barriers and are constantly worried about being repatriated, she added. One of the migrants is Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an Iranian national who fled her country out of fear of persecution because of her conversion to Christianity. 'Under Islamic law, you cannot convert from Islam to any other religion,' said Herischi, who represents her. Ghasemzadeh now worries her life will be at risk if she's returned to Iran. 'We are in danger,' she said in text messages to CNN on Tuesday. 'We are waiting for (a) miracle.' At the hotel, some migrants tried to voice their concerns by sending distress signals to journalists gathered outside. Standing in front of their windows, they held up pieces of paper with handwritten notes begging for support. 'Please help us,' one sign read. 'We are not (safe) in our country.' Another message was written with lipstick directly on the window. 'HELP US,' it read in bold, red letters. The migrants were not allowed to leave the hotel 'for their own protection,' Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego told a local radio program on Wednesday. He said they were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Soto argues that the migrants have the right to seek asylum because they're fleeing persecution. 'These people that are requesting refugee (status) — it's not because they want to come here on an adventure or a trip. No, they're escaping. They're victims of violence and persecution,' she told CNN. Soto said she tried at least four times to meet her clients at the hotel to sign legal documents required by authorities but was blocked by officials and never made it past the lobby. Soto sent CNN a video filmed by her clients, showing her waving to them from the hotel staircase below, trying to reach them to hand them the paperwork. But the clients were prevented from going down and Soto was told to leave. 'They actually were so emotional, screaming and said, 'I want my lawyer! I want her. I want to talk to her. I don't want to talk to these people here,'' Soto said. Attorney Susana Sabalza told CNN she represents a family from Taiwan who was held at the hotel for five days without knowing what was happening. She said that while they had comfortable beds and a place to stay, they were under 'psychological pressure being closed in with security guards, immigration police, (and) officers there.' CNN has reached out to Panama's security ministry, as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who are involved in the repatriation efforts. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday denied that authorities have violated any laws. 'These organizations are respectful of human rights. It's false and I deny that we are mistreating them,' Mulino insisted. Security Minister Ábrego said Wednesday that he hadn't heard of any migrants requesting asylum there. 'But if they think they have the need, as any human being would, to request asylum, we have to pay attention to it and approve or disapprove it,' he added. CNN has reached out to Panama's National Office for Refugee Assistance to determine if anyone has filed an asylum claim. The Panamanian government said that from Tuesday to Wednesday, about 97 migrants were taken out of the hotel and bused to a remote holding camp on the outskirts of the Darién Jungle. It happened after a New York Times report exposed the desperation of those stranded in the hotel in Panama City. The miracle that Ghasemzadeh had hoped for didn't come. Hours after talking to CNN, she became one of those transferred to the camp. Her relatives said she learned late Tuesday night that she would be moved out of the hotel with about 12 other people, and that she didn't know where authorities would take her at the time. Herischi, who represents Ghasemzadeh and nine other refugees, told CNN that his clients ended up being detained in a 'very bad' camp. He said they described the site as tough and dirty, with limited access to medication and the internet. One family has a sick child who could be heard crying in the background during a call between Herischi and Panamanian officials. Sabalza said the family she represents was also taken to the camp. 'It's complicated because there are children five years old (and) it's a tropical place,' she told CNN. She said Panamanian authorities had not yet provided them with guidelines on how the attorneys would be able to visit their clients at the camp or if they would need special permits to enter. 'It is urgent for us to have clarity about the mental and physical health status of our (clients),' she said. When the migrants arrived at the gate on Wednesday morning, Herischi said the situation was so unorganized that the guards didn't even have a list of the migrants' names to identify them upon arrival. The guards later confiscated all the migrants' cell phones. 'It shows that (it's) such an unorganized and never-thought-of (situation,) and just ad hoc political decision to accept this, but they don't know what to do with them,' he told CNN. He added that he plans to file legal action against Panama and the US in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and US federal court. More than 100 migrants have asked not to be repatriated, Panamanian officials have said. The IOM is expected to work with them and try to find a third country that will accept them, Security Minister Ábrego said. Meanwhile, President Mulino said another group of migrants would be sent to the camp because 'that's where they can be more at ease.' He added that 175 migrants who are still in the hotel have voluntarily agreed to return to their countries of origin. At least 13 have already been sent back. Herischi said Panamanian authorities assured him they would not send Ghasemzadeh and other migrants back to Iran if they expressed fear of reprisals. Instead, officials said they would speak with the embassies of other countries to see if they can accept them. Herischi concluded, 'The only 'luck' that they got is that Panama has no relationship with Iran, so there is no Iranian embassy there.' 'That's a good thing.'
CNN
22-02-2025
- Politics
- CNN
‘We are in danger': Migrants deported from US were locked in hotel and held at remote camp in Panama, lawyers say
For days, they say they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world. Nearly 300 migrants from Asia, all deported by the US, were held there by Panamanian authorities who agreed to take them in and eventually repatriate them. It's part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, which it has pressured Latin American nations to help with. Some migrants have been transferred to a remote camp at the edge of a jungle that few can access, lawyers representing some of the migrants told CNN. Now, they wait to learn if they will be sent back to the countries they fled or to another nation willing to receive them. But the conditions they have faced are distressing and may have violated their rights, the lawyers said. The migrants started arriving in Panama City last week after being deported from the US. Some didn't even know they were being flown to another country until they actually landed in Panama, according to attorney Ali Herischi, who said 'they were told they're going to Texas.' The migrants were then sent to the Decapolis Hotel and forced to stay there for days without stepping foot outside. Jenny Soto Fernández, a Panamanian lawyer who represents about 24 migrants from India and Iran, said her clients were living in isolation, fear and uncertainty. She said a lot of them didn't know their rights and weren't given orders of removal upon being deported. They also face language barriers and are constantly worried about being repatriated, she added. One of the migrants is Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an Iranian national who fled her country out of fear of persecution because of her conversion to Christianity. 'Under Islamic law, you cannot convert from Islam to any other religion,' said Herischi, who represents her. Ghasemzadeh now worries her life will be at risk if she's returned to Iran. 'We are in danger,' she said in text messages to CNN on Tuesday. 'We are waiting for (a) miracle.' At the hotel, some migrants tried to voice their concerns by sending distress signals to journalists gathered outside. Standing in front of their windows, they held up pieces of paper with handwritten notes begging for support. 'Please help us,' one sign read. 'We are not (safe) in our country.' Another message was written with lipstick directly on the window. 'HELP US,' it read in bold, red letters. The migrants were not allowed to leave the hotel 'for their own protection,' Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego told a local radio program on Wednesday. He said they were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Soto argues that the migrants have the right to seek asylum because they're fleeing persecution. 'These people that are requesting refugee (status) — it's not because they want to come here on an adventure or a trip. No, they're escaping. They're victims of violence and persecution,' she told CNN. Soto said she tried at least four times to meet her clients at the hotel to sign legal documents required by authorities but was blocked by officials and never made it past the lobby. Soto sent CNN a video filmed by her clients, showing her waving to them from the hotel staircase below, trying to reach them to hand them the paperwork. But the clients were prevented from going down and Soto was told to leave. 'They actually were so emotional, screaming and said, 'I want my lawyer! I want her. I want to talk to her. I don't want to talk to these people here,'' Soto said. Attorney Susana Sabalza told CNN she represents a family from Taiwan who was held at the hotel for five days without knowing what was happening. She said that while they had comfortable beds and a place to stay, they were under 'psychological pressure being closed in with security guards, immigration police, (and) officers there.' CNN has reached out to Panama's security ministry, as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who are involved in the repatriation efforts. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday denied that authorities have violated any laws. 'These organizations are respectful of human rights. It's false and I deny that we are mistreating them,' Mulino insisted. Security Minister Ábrego said Wednesday that he hadn't heard of any migrants requesting asylum there. 'But if they think they have the need, as any human being would, to request asylum, we have to pay attention to it and approve or disapprove it,' he added. CNN has reached out to Panama's National Office for Refugee Assistance to determine if anyone has filed an asylum claim. The Panamanian government said that from Tuesday to Wednesday, about 97 migrants were taken out of the hotel and bused to a remote holding camp on the outskirts of the Darién Jungle. It happened after a New York Times report exposed the desperation of those stranded in the hotel in Panama City. The miracle that Ghasemzadeh had hoped for didn't come. Hours after talking to CNN, she became one of those transferred to the camp. Her relatives said she learned late Tuesday night that she would be moved out of the hotel with about 12 other people, and that she didn't know where authorities would take her at the time. Herischi, who represents Ghasemzadeh and nine other refugees, told CNN that his clients ended up being detained in a 'very bad' camp. He said they described the site as tough and dirty, with limited access to medication and the internet. One family has a sick child who could be heard crying in the background during a call between Herischi and Panamanian officials. Sabalza said the family she represents was also taken to the camp. 'It's complicated because there are children five years old (and) it's a tropical place,' she told CNN. She said Panamanian authorities had not yet provided them with guidelines on how the attorneys would be able to visit their clients at the camp or if they would need special permits to enter. 'It is urgent for us to have clarity about the mental and physical health status of our (clients),' she said. When the migrants arrived at the gate on Wednesday morning, Herischi said the situation was so unorganized that the guards didn't even have a list of the migrants' names to identify them upon arrival. The guards later confiscated all the migrants' cell phones. 'It shows that (it's) such an unorganized and never-thought-of (situation,) and just ad hoc political decision to accept this, but they don't know what to do with them,' he told CNN. He added that he plans to file legal action against Panama and the US in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and US federal court. More than 100 migrants have asked not to be repatriated, Panamanian officials have said. The IOM is expected to work with them and try to find a third country that will accept them, Security Minister Ábrego said. Meanwhile, President Mulino said another group of migrants would be sent to the camp because 'that's where they can be more at ease.' He added that 175 migrants who are still in the hotel have voluntarily agreed to return to their countries of origin. At least 13 have already been sent back. Herischi said Panamanian authorities assured him they would not send Ghasemzadeh and other migrants back to Iran if they expressed fear of reprisals. Instead, officials said they would speak with the embassies of other countries to see if they can accept them. Herischi concluded, 'The only 'luck' that they got is that Panama has no relationship with Iran, so there is no Iranian embassy there.' 'That's a good thing.'
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘We are in danger': Migrants deported from US were locked in hotel and held at remote camp in Panama, lawyers say
For days, they say they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world. Nearly 300 migrants from Asia, all deported by the US, were held there by Panamanian authorities who agreed to take them in and eventually repatriate them. It's part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, which it has pressured Latin American nations to help with. Some migrants have been transferred to a remote camp at the edge of a jungle that few can access, lawyers representing some of the migrants told CNN. Now, they wait to learn if they will be sent back to the countries they fled or to another nation willing to receive them. But the conditions they have faced are distressing and may have violated their rights, the lawyers said. The migrants started arriving in Panama City last week after being deported from the US. Some didn't even know they were being flown to another country until they actually landed in Panama, according to attorney Ali Herischi, who said 'they were told they're going to Texas.' The migrants were then sent to the Decapolis Hotel and forced to stay there for days without stepping foot outside. Jenny Soto Fernández, a Panamanian lawyer who represents about 24 migrants from India and Iran, said her clients were living in isolation, fear and uncertainty. She said a lot of them didn't know their rights and weren't given orders of removal upon being deported. They also face language barriers and are constantly worried about being repatriated, she added. One of the migrants is Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an Iranian national who fled her country out of fear of persecution because of her conversion to Christianity. 'Under Islamic law, you cannot convert from Islam to any other religion,' said Herischi, who represents her. Ghasemzadeh now worries her life will be at risk if she's returned to Iran. 'We are in danger,' she said in text messages to CNN on Tuesday. 'We are waiting for (a) miracle.' At the hotel, some migrants tried to voice their concerns by sending distress signals to journalists gathered outside. Standing in front of their windows, they held up pieces of paper with handwritten notes begging for support. 'Please help us,' one sign read. 'We are not (safe) in our country.' Another message was written with lipstick directly on the window. 'HELP US,' it read in bold, red letters. The migrants were not allowed to leave the hotel 'for their own protection,' Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego told a local radio program on Wednesday. He said they were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Soto argues that the migrants have the right to seek asylum because they're fleeing persecution. 'These people that are requesting refugee (status) — it's not because they want to come here on an adventure or a trip. No, they're escaping. They're victims of violence and persecution,' she told CNN. Soto said she tried at least four times to meet her clients at the hotel to sign legal documents required by authorities but was blocked by officials and never made it past the lobby. Soto sent CNN a video filmed by her clients, showing her waving to them from the hotel staircase below, trying to reach them to hand them the paperwork. But the clients were prevented from going down and Soto was told to leave. 'They actually were so emotional, screaming and said, 'I want my lawyer! I want her. I want to talk to her. I don't want to talk to these people here,'' Soto said. Attorney Susana Sabalza told CNN she represents a family from Taiwan who was held at the hotel for five days without knowing what was happening. She said that while they had comfortable beds and a place to stay, they were under 'psychological pressure being closed in with security guards, immigration police, (and) officers there.' CNN has reached out to Panama's security ministry, as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who are involved in the repatriation efforts. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday denied that authorities have violated any laws. 'These organizations are respectful of human rights. It's false and I deny that we are mistreating them,' Mulino insisted. Security Minister Ábrego said Wednesday that he hadn't heard of any migrants requesting asylum there. 'But if they think they have the need, as any human being would, to request asylum, we have to pay attention to it and approve or disapprove it,' he added. CNN has reached out to Panama's National Office for Refugee Assistance to determine if anyone has filed an asylum claim. The Panamanian government said that from Tuesday to Wednesday, about 97 migrants were taken out of the hotel and bused to a remote holding camp on the outskirts of the Darién Jungle. It happened after a New York Times report exposed the desperation of those stranded in the hotel in Panama City. The miracle that Ghasemzadeh had hoped for didn't come. Hours after talking to CNN, she became one of those transferred to the camp. Her relatives said she learned late Tuesday night that she would be moved out of the hotel with about 12 other people, and that she didn't know where authorities would take her at the time. Herischi, who represents Ghasemzadeh and nine other refugees, told CNN that his clients ended up being detained in a 'very bad' camp. He said they described the site as tough and dirty, with limited access to medication and the internet. One family has a sick child who could be heard crying in the background during a call between Herischi and Panamanian officials. Sabalza said the family she represents was also taken to the camp. 'It's complicated because there are children five years old (and) it's a tropical place,' she told CNN. She said Panamanian authorities had not yet provided them with guidelines on how the attorneys would be able to visit their clients at the camp or if they would need special permits to enter. 'It is urgent for us to have clarity about the mental and physical health status of our (clients),' she said. When the migrants arrived at the gate on Wednesday morning, Herischi said the situation was so unorganized that the guards didn't even have a list of the migrants' names to identify them upon arrival. The guards later confiscated all the migrants' cell phones. 'It shows that (it's) such an unorganized and never-thought-of (situation,) and just ad hoc political decision to accept this, but they don't know what to do with them,' he told CNN. He added that he plans to file legal action against Panama and the US in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and US federal court. More than 100 migrants have asked not to be repatriated, Panamanian officials have said. The IOM is expected to work with them and try to find a third country that will accept them, Security Minister Ábrego said. Meanwhile, President Mulino said another group of migrants would be sent to the camp because 'that's where they can be more at ease.' He added that 175 migrants who are still in the hotel have voluntarily agreed to return to their countries of origin. At least 13 have already been sent back. Herischi said Panamanian authorities assured him they would not send Ghasemzadeh and other migrants back to Iran if they expressed fear of reprisals. Instead, officials said they would speak with the embassies of other countries to see if they can accept them. Herischi concluded, 'The only 'luck' that they got is that Panama has no relationship with Iran, so there is no Iranian embassy there.' 'That's a good thing.'
