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The Hill
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Shaheen compels answers on Trump deportations to Costa Rica, Panama
The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is forcing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to transmit to Congress agreements reached with the governments of Costa Rica and Panama for accepting deported migrants, including asylum seekers, vulnerable women and children. In a letter sent last week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) invoked a 2023 federal law that the State Department must provide international agreements or non-binding instruments that are the 'subject of a written communication from the Chair or Ranking Member' of either the Senate Foreign Relations or House Foreign Affairs Committees. 'This letter constitutes the statutorily required written communication,' Shaheen wrote. She raised alarm over the approximately 500 third-country nationals deported to Central America since February — and many back to their countries of origin. Shaheen said that dozens of those deported remain in vulnerable situations in Panama and Costa Rica, at risk of exploitation, statelessness and other harm. 'These individuals included Iranian Christians fleeing religious persecution, Afghan women escaping the Taliban's ruthless crackdown and Russians facing political persecution for protesting Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine,' Shaheen wrote of the initial deportees. 'While some chose to return to their countries of origin, dozens of deported migrants are still in Panama and Costa Rica with no clear path forward.' The Trump administration has made a crackdown on immigration a focus of the president's second term, claiming to expel violent criminals and illegal migrants, but working to terminate the asylum process, canceling protected status for temporary residents and drumming up criminal allegations against legal visa holders. After a visit by Rubio to Central America in late January, the U.S., Panama and Costa Rica announced expanded cooperation on migration, with the two Central American countries accepting hundreds of third-party nationals deported from the U.S. Human rights groups warned of those countries becoming a 'black hole' for deported migrants. Those facing deportation to their home countries told human rights groups they feared 'serious risks to their lives or safety. ' In her letter to Rubio, Shaheen also called for information about what steps the administration has taken or is taking to ensure 'that these individuals are not trafficked for sexual or labor exploitation, rendered stateless or sent to a country where they will be subjected to torture or other harm.' 'Human rights groups report that migrants who cannot return to their country of origin due to fear of persecution or death are now living in shelters in or near the city with limited support from charitable groups,' Shaheen wrote. 'This includes several young Afghan women who are without their families. Their legal status and future are uncertain; some who have sought asylum have already been denied. With limited money, little to no Spanish, and unclear legal status, many of these migrants, particularly women and children, are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.' Shaheen cited that in Costa Rica, deported migrants, including 100 children, face similar challenges. In June, Costa Rica's Constitutional Court ordered the government to release migrants deported from the U.S. and held in a temporary shelter since February, saying the government had violated the migrants rights. 'For those still in the country and unable to return home, their future remains uncertain,' Shaheen wrote. 'I look forward to your prompt response.'
Time of India
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Chaos As ICE Arrests Iranian Man In LA; His Wife Falls Down, Body Shakes With Panic Attack
A routine ICE arrest in Los Angeles turned into a traumatic scene when an Iranian Christian asylum-seeker collapsed in panic as her husband was detained. The woman suffered severe convulsions on the street while federal agents stood nearby. Captured on video by her pastor, the emotional footage shows a community in distress and raises questions about the treatment of vulnerable asylum-seekers. This package focuses on the woman's breakdown, her husband's arrest, and growing concern over ICE raids targeting Iranian Christians in the U.S. Read More
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Iranian Christians feared death in Iran. Then the US deported them to Panama.
The young woman in the video sounds desperate. Sitting on a bed in a hotel room surrounded by eight other people, including several children, she explains to the camera that they're all Iranian Christians who journeyed to the U.S.-Mexico border near Tijuana to seek asylum – then were shackled and flown six hours in a military plane to Panama. 'All of our cases are legitimate,' she says, her eyes burrowing with worry. 'I'm a protester in Iran with a record. I can't go back.' The woman – later identified as 27-year-old Artemis Ghasemzadeh – was part of a group of Iranian Christians, as well as migrants from Afghanistan, Nepal, China and other countries, who were recently flown from the U.S. to Panama and Costa Rica. The flights are part of President Donald Trump and his administration's strategy of outsourcing some of its most challenging deportations and removing as many people as possible who are in the U.S. without permission. On Thursday, the administration took another step designating eight gangs from Latin America as "foreign terrorist organizations," increasing the reach of U.S. law enforcement as they race to deport record number of migrants and deliver on one of Trump's biggest campaign promises. But these deportation flights trample migrant's rights and could return some asylum-seekers to dangerous situations, immigrant advocates and attorneys say. 'This is unprecedented,' Hillary Walsh, an immigration attorney in Phoenix whose office has been in touch with the Iranians in Panama, said of the new flights. 'It's not making asylum law hard – it's eliminating asylum law.' Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the deportations, did not respond to a request for comment. Ghasemzadeh and the other Iranians traveled through several countries, including Mexico, to reach the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana, Walsh said. After they crossed the border, U.S. officials took their passports and other documents and gave them immigration detention wristbands. They were never given 'credible fear' interviews, Walsh said, often the first step to determining whether migrants could apply for asylum. The migrants were told detention centers there were full and they were transporting them to Texas, Walsh said. Instead, they were shackled, boarded onto a C-17 military cargo plane and flown to Panama. 'They tied our hands and feet,' Ghasemzadeh says in the video, which, as of Wednesday, had been shared more than 160,000 times. 'Women and children were getting sick, fainting … You could hear cries and horrifying noises from the plane.' As of 2019, there were about 385,000 Iranian immigrants living in the United States, or less than 1 percent of the nearly 45 million immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That year, there were approximately 7,000 unauthorized Iranian immigrants, or less than 0.1% of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. Iranian Christians present a particularly compelling asylum case, according to immigrant advocates, since the Iranian government prohibits converting from Islam to any religion. Sharia, or Islamic religious law, as interpreted by the government considers conversion from Islam apostasy, a crime punishable by death, according to the U.S. State Department. The vast majority of Iranians who arrive in the U.S. do so through a third country, often Turkey, and with the proper visas, said Peyman Malaz, chief operating officer of the PARS Equality Center, an L.A.-based advocacy group that helps mostly Persian-speaking migrants. Over the past four or five months, however, his center has seen an uptick in Iranians arriving at the border who complain that their wait times in third countries are stretching past five or six years, he said. Those who arrive at the border are often the most persecuted and desperate, such as Iranian Christians, he said. Malaz said he was dismayed to hear of the Iranian Christians who were flown to Panama without any process for asylum. 'I was shocked,' he said. 'The United States has always been a beacon of hope for refugees. These people are running away from an autocratic government.' The Iranian Christians were part of a flight of 119 people who arrived in Panama aboard the C-17 on February 12, the first of three flights to arrive in the country the past week, said Tom Cartwright, who tracks deportation flights using publicly available flight records for the advocacy group Witness at the Border. Another flight filled with migrants later landed in Costa Rica. More: 'Woman, life, liberty': Iranians on why they'll risk beatings and death for change The last time the U.S. government transported migrants to a third country that was not their country of origin was when immigration officials flew asylum-seekers from Guatemala, Honduras and other countries to southern Mexico under the Biden administration, Cartwright said. Those flights ended in late 2022. The use of military cargo flights is baffling, he said, since U.S. officials could transport migrants on commercial charter flights for a fraction of the cost. Also, some of the nationalities on the flights, such as Nepal and India, the U.S. could deport directly to their countries of origin rather than pay to take them through a third country, Cartwright said. More: OnPolitics: Why Iranians are fighting for their freedom 'From a financial sense, it makes no sense at all. Zero,' he said. Cartwright said he and other immigrant advocates suspect Trump is using an executive order he signed last month to invoke a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the president the authority to 'suspend the entry' of certain noncitizens, whose entry would be 'detrimental to the interests of the United States.' Earlier this month, immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration in federal court, claiming the executive order unlawfully shut down asylum at the border. 'This is an unprecedented power grab that will put countless lives in danger,' Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement accompanying the filing. 'No president has the authority to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger.' On Tuesday, Ghasemzadeh and the other Iranians were transferred from their hotel in Panama City to a remote migrant center at the edge of the jungle, according to Walsh's office. It's unclear what rights and procedures are being afforded to them. Attorneys are trying to help her and others, Walsh said. But at such a distance and with communication a challenge, it's becoming increasingly difficult, Walsh said. Her top concern: That Ghasemzadeh and the others could be returned to Iran. 'They'll definitely be harmed when they go back,' Walsh said. 'There's no question in my mind.' Follow Rick Jervis on X: @MrRJervis. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: They feared death in Iran. The US banished them to Panama.
USA Today
20-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Iranian Christians feared death in Iran. Then the US deported them to Panama.
Iranian Christians feared death in Iran. Then the US deported them to Panama. Show Caption Hide Caption Critics question the legality of undocumented migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay For the first time around ten undocumented migrants arrived at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base. The U.S. government has begun flying migrants to Panama and Costa Rica as part of a strategy to increase deportations. Immigrant advocates say the flights violate migrants' rights and could put asylum-seekers in danger. The young woman in the video sounds desperate. Sitting on a bed in a hotel room surrounded by eight other people, including several children, she explains to the camera that they're all Iranian Christians who journeyed to the U.S.-Mexico border near Tijuana to seek asylum – then were shackled and flown six hours in a military plane to Panama. 'All of our cases are legitimate,' she says, her eyes burrowing with worry. 'I'm a protester in Iran with a record. I can't go back.' The woman – later identified as 27-year-old Artemis Ghasemzadeh – was part of a group of Iranian Christians, as well as migrants from Afghanistan, Nepal, China and other countries, who were recently flown from the U.S. to Panama and Costa Rica. The flights are part of President Donald Trump and his administration's strategy of outsourcing some of its most challenging deportations and removing as many people as possible who are in the U.S. without permission. On Thursday, the administration took another step designating eight gangs from Latin America as "foreign terrorist organizations," increasing the reach of U.S. law enforcement as they race to deport record number of migrants and deliver on one of Trump's biggest campaign promises. But these deportation flights trample migrant's rights and could return some asylum-seekers to dangerous situations, immigrant advocates and attorneys say. 'This is unprecedented,' Hillary Walsh, an immigration attorney in Phoenix whose office has been in touch with the Iranians in Panama, said of the new flights. 'It's not making asylum law hard – it's eliminating asylum law.' Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the deportations, did not respond to a request for comment. 'Cries and horrifying noises' Ghasemzadeh and the other Iranians traveled through several countries, including Mexico, to reach the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana, Walsh said. After they crossed the border, U.S. officials took their passports and other documents and gave them immigration detention wristbands. They were never given 'credible fear' interviews, Walsh said, often the first step to determining whether migrants could apply for asylum. The migrants were told detention centers there were full and they were transporting them to Texas, Walsh said. Instead, they were shackled, boarded onto a C-17 military cargo plane and flown to Panama. 'They tied our hands and feet,' Ghasemzadeh says in the video, which, as of Wednesday, had been shared more than 160,000 times. 'Women and children were getting sick, fainting … You could hear cries and horrifying noises from the plane.' As of 2019, there were about 385,000 Iranian immigrants living in the United States, or less than 1 percent of the nearly 45 million immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That year, there were approximately 7,000 unauthorized Iranian immigrants, or less than 0.1% of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. Iranian Christians present a particularly compelling asylum case, according to immigrant advocates, since the Iranian government prohibits converting from Islam to any religion. Sharia, or Islamic religious law, as interpreted by the government considers conversion from Islam apostasy, a crime punishable by death, according to the U.S. State Department. The vast majority of Iranians who arrive in the U.S. do so through a third country, often Turkey, and with the proper visas, said Peyman Malaz, chief operating officer of the PARS Equality Center, an L.A.-based advocacy group that helps mostly Persian-speaking migrants. More Iranians arrive at the border Over the past four or five months, however, his center has seen an uptick in Iranians arriving at the border who complain that their wait times in third countries are stretching past five or six years, he said. Those who arrive at the border are often the most persecuted and desperate, such as Iranian Christians, he said. Malaz said he was dismayed to hear of the Iranian Christians who were flown to Panama without any process for asylum. 'I was shocked,' he said. 'The United States has always been a beacon of hope for refugees. These people are running away from an autocratic government.' The Iranian Christians were part of a flight of 119 people who arrived in Panama aboard the C-17 on February 12, the first of three flights to arrive in the country the past week, said Tom Cartwright, who tracks deportation flights using publicly available flight records for the advocacy group Witness at the Border. Another flight filled with migrants later landed in Costa Rica. More: 'Woman, life, liberty': Iranians on why they'll risk beatings and death for change The last time the U.S. government transported migrants to a third country that was not their country of origin was when immigration officials flew asylum-seekers from Guatemala, Honduras and other countries to southern Mexico under the Biden administration, Cartwright said. Those flights ended in late 2022. The use of military cargo flights is baffling, he said, since U.S. officials could transport migrants on commercial charter flights for a fraction of the cost. Also, some of the nationalities on the flights, such as Nepal and India, the U.S. could deport directly to their countries of origin rather than pay to take them through a third country, Cartwright said. More: OnPolitics: Why Iranians are fighting for their freedom 'From a financial sense, it makes no sense at all. Zero,' he said. 'They'll definitely be harmed' Cartwright said he and other immigrant advocates suspect Trump is using an executive order he signed last month to invoke a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the president the authority to 'suspend the entry' of certain noncitizens, whose entry would be 'detrimental to the interests of the United States.' Earlier this month, immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration in federal court, claiming the executive order unlawfully shut down asylum at the border. 'This is an unprecedented power grab that will put countless lives in danger,' Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement accompanying the filing. 'No president has the authority to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger.' On Tuesday, Ghasemzadeh and the other Iranians were transferred from their hotel in Panama City to a remote migrant center at the edge of the jungle, according to Walsh's office. It's unclear what rights and procedures are being afforded to them. Attorneys are trying to help her and others, Walsh said. But at such a distance and with communication a challenge, it's becoming increasingly difficult, Walsh said. Her top concern: That Ghasemzadeh and the others could be returned to Iran. 'They'll definitely be harmed when they go back,' Walsh said. 'There's no question in my mind.' Follow Rick Jervis on X: @MrRJervis.
Boston Globe
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Migrants, deported to Panama under Trump plan, detained in remote jungle camp
'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.' Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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.' This article originally appeared in
