Latest news with #UnitedStatesCustomsandBorderProtection
India Today
22-05-2025
- India Today
Indian charged with possessing, transporting child pornography in US
An Indian has been charged with possession and transportation of child pornography in New Orleans in the US. Ashish Kapoor alias Romy Kapoor held digital videos and computer images which contained pictures of children with sexually explicit conduct, according to the statement issued by the US Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana, on May 21. All the children were below the age of 28-year-old was named in a new indictment filed on May 8. According to the superseding indictment, in February 2024, Kapoor transported a cellular phone containing digital videos and images depicting explicit convicted of possessing child pornography, Kapoor could face up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 (approximately Rs 2.08 crore), supervised release for the rest of his life, and a mandatory $100 special assessment fee. Acting US Attorney Michael M Simpson reiterated that the superseding indictment is merely a charge and that the guilt of the defendant must be proven beyond a reasonable case was investigated by the United States Department of Homeland Security, the United States Customs and Border Protection, and the New Orleans Police Department. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Maria Carboni of the Financial Crimes case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, the statement by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.
WIRED
06-05-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
US Border Agents Are Asking for Help Taking Photos of Everyone Entering the Country by Car
May 6, 2025 5:00 AM Customs and Border Protection has called for tech companies to pitch real-time face recognition technology that can capture everyone in a vehicle—not just those in the front seats. Photo Illustration:United States Customs and Border Protection is asking tech companies to send pitches for a real-time facial recognition tool that would take photos of every single person in a vehicle at a border crossing, including anyone in the back seats, and match them to travel documents, according to a document posted in a federal register last week. The request for information, or RIF, says that CBP already has a facial recognition tool that takes a picture of a person at a port of entry and compares it to travel or identity documents that someone gives to a border officer, as well as other photos from those documents already 'in government holdings.' 'Biometrically confirmed entries into the United States are added to the traveler's crossing record,' the document says. An agency under the Department of Homeland Security, CBP says that its facial recognition tool 'is currently operating in the air, sea, and land pedestrian environments.' The agency's goal is to bring it to 'the land vehicle environment.' According to a page on CBP's website updated last week, the agency is currently 'testing' how to do so. The RIF says that these tests demonstrate that while this facial recognition tool has 'improved,' it isn't always able to get photos of every vehicle passenger, especially if they're in the second or third row. 'Human behavior, multiple passenger vehicle rows, and environmental obstacles all present challenges unique to the vehicle environment,' the document says. CBP says it wants a private vendor to provide it with a tool that would 'augment the passenger images' and 'capture 100% of vehicle passengers.' Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, received a document from CBP via public record request that reveals the results of a 152 day test the agency conducted on its port of entry facial recognition system from late 2021 to early 2022. The document Maass obtained was first reported by The Intercept. Maas said that what stood out to him was the error rates. Cameras at the Anzalduas border crossing at Mexico's border with McAllen, Texas captured photos of everyone in the car just 76 percent of the time, and of those people, just 81 percent met the "validation requirements" for matching their face with their identification documents. The current iteration of the system matches a person's photo to their travel documents in what's known as one-to-one facial recognition. The primary risk here, Maas says, is the system failing to recognize that someone matches their own documents. This differs from one-to-many facial recognition, which police may use to identify a suspect based on a surveillance photo, where the primary risk is someone getting a false positive match and being falsely identified as a suspect. Maas says it's unclear whether CBP's error rates primarily have to do with the cameras or the matching system itself. 'We don't know what racial disparities, gender disparities, etc, come up with these systems,' he says. As reported by The Intercept in 2024, the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate issued a request for information last August that's similar to the one that CBP posted last week. However, the DHS document currently appears to be unavailable. Maas adds that it's important to remember that CBP's push to widen and improve its surveillance isn't unique to the current Trump administration. 'CBP surveillance strategy carries over from administration to administration—it always falls short, it always has vendor issues and contracting issues and waste issues and abuse issues,' Maas says. 'What changes is often the rhetoric and the theater around it.' DHS noted in a 2024 report that CBP has historically struggled to get "biographic and biometric" data from people leaving the country, particularly if they leave over land. This means that it's hard for it to track people self-reporting the country, which is something the administration is encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to do. CBP's recent request for information only mentions inbound vehicles, not outbound vehicles, meaning it's currently not set up to use facial recognition to track self-deparations. CBP did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. CBP's request for information comes less than three weeks after 404 Media revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is paying the software company Palantir $30 million to build a platform that would allow the agency to perform 'complete target analysis of known populations.' According to a contract justification published a few days later, the platform, called ImmigrationOS, would give ICE 'near real-time visibility' on people self-deporting from the US, with the goal of having accurate numbers on how many people are doing so. However, ICE did not specify where it would get the data to power ImmigrationOS. In the ICE document that justifies paying Palantir for ImmigrationOS, the agency does not specify where Palantir would get the data to power the tool. However, it does note that Palantir could create ImmigrationOS by configuring the case management system that the company has provided to ICE since 2014. This case management system integrates all of the information ICE may have about a person from investigative records or government databases, according to a government privacy assessment published in 2016. It's unclear if the system may have integrated new data sources over the past decade. But at the time of the assessment, the system stored information about someone's physical attributes—like hair and eye color, height and weight, and any scars or tattoos—as well as any "location-related data' from 'covert tracking devices,' and any data from license plate readers, which can provide a detailed history on where a person goes in their vehicle and when.
CNN
30-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
She was expelled from the United States, but still thought America would help. She was wrong
She asked to be identified only as 'Ambo,' out of fear of being recognized back in her home country. 'Life is very difficult for me,' she told CNN from a school-turned-shelter on a humidly hot day in Panama City, Panama. Over the ambient noise of blade fans attempting to cool the large room, she explained she left her native country of Cameroon due to 'political issues,' fearing that she would either be 'sentenced dead' or spend the rest of her life in prison if she stayed. She remembers arriving at the US-Mexico border on January 23 – three days after US President Trump's inauguration – after trekking through Central America and the dangerous Darién jungle. She turned herself in to United States Customs and Border Protection in hopes of making her case for asylum. By her count she spent 19 days in US custody, then finally got that chance – or so she thought. Just after midnight on February 13, by her recollection, she and other migrants were loaded onto a bus where they drove for hours. 'We were so happy thinking that they were going to transfer us to a camp where we are going to meet an immigration officer,' she recalled. She still thought that when she was loaded onto a plane, believing they were headed to another facility in the United States. But when they landed, they were in Panama. 'We're asking them why are they bringing us to Panama? 'Why are we in Panama?'' she said, 'People started crying.' Even still, she was optimistic. 'We're like thinking maybe the camp in the US is full. That is why they are bringing us here. When it will be our turn, they will come and take us to give us a listening ear,' she said. But the Panamanian government took them to a hotel in Panama City, guarded tightly by security, no phones, and limited access to the outside world, according to multiple migrants CNN spoke to. Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego previously told a local radio program the deportees were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Even in a new country, under a new government authority, she held out hope someone from the United States government would step in and fix the situation. 'We were somehow happy that maybe the immigration from the US would come to Panama to listen to our stories,' she told CNN, now fighting back tears. 'It wasn't the case.' Her voice cracked, recalling the moment her optimism shattered. This is the downstream reality of an increased immigration crackdown in the United States, which the Trump administration has pressured Latin American countries like Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador to help with. Just days before she arrived at the border, Trump had signed an executive order effectively shutting down the US-Mexico border to migrants seeking asylum in the United States. Weeks later, the Panamanian government agreed to receive some of those migrants, at least temporarily, and took in nearly 300. Many are asylum-seekers from places like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Sri Lanka. They are now are caught in limbo – expelled from the United States, but unable to go back to their home countries out of fear of being persecuted or killed. 'They shouldn't just like abandon us like that without telling us what we have done wrong. It become very, very difficult and confusing to us. I've left my children back home,' Ambo said through tears. Another woman from Ethiopia, was on a similar flight. She too requested not to use her name for fear of retaliation in her home country. 'I am so shocked. I'm saying this is Texas or Panama?' she recalled. She told CNN she too had trekked through Central America, injuring her leg in the Darién jungle, to reach the US-Mexico border. She said she too had left Ethiopia due to political issues and feared returning. 'I don't have family. They died already,' she told CNN. And a fellow asylum-seeker migrant Afghanistan, who did not want to share his identity, told CNN en Español's Elizabeth Gonzalez that if he were to return to Afghanistan, he would be killed by the Taliban. They all now live in a humble shelter, one of multiple places in Panama where these migrants are trying to navigate life, in a country where they don't speak the language. 'Almost all of us are from different countries, but here we are like family, you know?' said the woman from Ethiopia. As she sat with CNN, mattresses on the floor lining the edges of the room, she said, 'We are together. Everyone is in distress. Everyone is in a bad situation.' Days after they were initially brought to a Panamanian hotel, the migrants were loaded onto buses again. They expected to be moved to another hotel, Ambo says. But the drive stretched on for hours, until they arrived at a facility over a hundred miles outside of Panama City on the outskirts of the Darién jungle near the border with Colombia. 'Are you going to kill us? Why are you bringing us here?' she recalled asking in fear, 'Bringing us in this place, a forest. What is going to happen to us?' Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an English teacher from Iran, remembers crying after being expelled from the United States on her February birthday. 'I changed my religion in Iran and the punishment of that is may be a long prison or at the end is death,' she told CNN. 'They took two of my friends from the underground church, so I understand it's time to go. The next is me,' she added. In February she was seen in a window of the migrant hotel with the words 'Help Us' written across the window. Days later she was at this Panamanian jungle camp, known as the San Vicente shelter, with over 100 other migrants who were in the same situation as hers. 'The food was really disgusting,' said Ghasemzadeh. 'The bathroom was really dirty, no privacy, no door,' she added. Salam said the water for bathing was not clean, causing hives to break out on her skin. She pulled up a pant leg to show the marks on her skin. 'All my body is like this,' she said. Panama's President José Raúl Mulino has repeatedly denied that authorities have violated the deportees' rights. Reached for comment about conditions at the camp, a spokesperson from the Panamanian Security Minister's office deferred to the International Office for Migration (IOM), which assists migrants. A spokesperson at IOM stressed, however, that handling the deportees is a 'government-led operation,' telling CNN 'we did not have direct involvement in the detention or restriction of movement of individuals.' Through every step of the way, attorneys for these migrants argue their rights were violated. 'Our claim is that America violated the right to seek asylum and by extension, by receiving them, the Panamanian government did the same thing,' said Silvia Serna Román, regional litigator for Mexico and Central America for the Global Strategic Litigation Council. 'Even though they all claim to be to be asylum seekers, they have never had their right to be heard,' she added. Serna Román is part of a group of international lawyers that filed a lawsuit against Panama on these alleged violations in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ian Kysel, who is also part of that group, has previously said they are exploring a range of further legal actions, including against US-specific entities and other countries that might be taking in deported or expelled US migrants. Panama has denied any wrongdoing in this saga. In early March, the Panamanian government released the over 100 migrants from the remote jungle camp, but gave them 30-day 'humanitarian' permits, extendable up to 90 days, to find another place to go or risk deportation from Panama. 'We're also trying to navigate the terms of those permits,' Serna Román explained. 'If they're only given 90 days and the 90 days come up then they might be forcibly removed and they might be like involuntarily be taken back to their countries and that's our concern,' she added. All the migrants CNN and CNN en Español spoke to said going back to their countries simply was not an option. 'Asylum means I'm not safe in my country, I need help. Just that. I'm not criminal. I'm educated person and just need help,' Ghasemzadeh explained. 'If I come back to my country, my government will kill me, so in Panama they are free to kill me,' she added. Aurelio Martinez, a spokesperson in Panama's security ministry, told CNN that after the 90-day period it would be studied whether to grant another extension or if their status would become illegal. When CNN pressed on whether that could trigger forcible repatriation, Martinez simply said they will review each case individually, that Panama always supports migrants and human rights, and that they intend to maintain that support and commitment. Ambo, her life now in a demoralizing standstill, still dreams about the United States, even though she has no idea when this nightmare will end. 'America has always been a country that received people from all over the whole world. I believe that is why many people are going towards the USA for to seek for asylum,' she said. 'They should listen to us and see if they can permit us to stay or not because when you don't listen to somebody, it means that human rights does not exist again in America.'
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
She was expelled from the United States, but still thought America would help. She was wrong
She asked to be identified only as 'Ambo,' out of fear of being recognized back in her home country. 'Life is very difficult for me,' she told CNN from a school-turned-shelter on a humidly hot day in Panama City, Panama. Over the ambient noise of blade fans attempting to cool the large room, she explained she left her native country of Cameroon due to 'political issues,' fearing that she would either be 'sentenced dead' or spend the rest of her life in prison if she stayed. She remembers arriving at the US-Mexico border on January 23 – three days after US President Trump's inauguration – after trekking through Central America and the dangerous Darién jungle. She turned herself in to United States Customs and Border Protection in hopes of making her case for asylum. By her count she spent 19 days in US custody, then finally got that chance – or so she thought. Just after midnight on February 13, by her recollection, she and other migrants were loaded onto a bus where they drove for hours. 'We were so happy thinking that they were going to transfer us to a camp where we are going to meet an immigration officer,' she recalled. She still thought that when she was loaded onto a plane, believing they were headed to another facility in the United States. But when they landed, they were in Panama. 'We're asking them why are they bringing us to Panama? 'Why are we in Panama?'' she said, 'People started crying.' Even still, she was optimistic. 'We're like thinking maybe the camp in the US is full. That is why they are bringing us here. When it will be our turn, they will come and take us to give us a listening ear,' she said. But the Panamanian government took them to a hotel in Panama City, guarded tightly by security, no phones, and limited access to the outside world, according to multiple migrants CNN spoke to. Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego previously told a local radio program the deportees were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Even in a new country, under a new government authority, she held out hope someone from the United States government would step in and fix the situation. 'We were somehow happy that maybe the immigration from the US would come to Panama to listen to our stories,' she told CNN, now fighting back tears. 'It wasn't the case.' Her voice cracked, recalling the moment her optimism shattered. This is the downstream reality of an increased immigration crackdown in the United States, which the Trump administration has pressured Latin American countries like Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador to help with. Just days before she arrived at the border, Trump had signed an executive order effectively shutting down the US-Mexico border to migrants seeking asylum in the United States. Weeks later, the Panamanian government agreed to receive some of those migrants, at least temporarily, and took in nearly 300. Many are asylum-seekers from places like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Sri Lanka. They are now are caught in limbo – expelled from the United States, but unable to go back to their home countries out of fear of being persecuted or killed. 'They shouldn't just like abandon us like that without telling us what we have done wrong. It become very, very difficult and confusing to us. I've left my children back home,' Ambo said through tears. Another woman from Ethiopia, was on a similar flight. She too requested not to use her name for fear of retaliation in her home country. 'I am so shocked. I'm saying this is Texas or Panama?' she recalled. She told CNN she too had trekked through Central America, injuring her leg in the Darién jungle, to reach the US-Mexico border. She said she too had left Ethiopia due to political issues and feared returning. 'I don't have family. They died already,' she told CNN. And a fellow asylum-seeker migrant Afghanistan, who did not want to share his identity, told CNN en Español's Elizabeth Gonzalez that if he were to return to Afghanistan, he would be killed by the Taliban. They all now live in a humble shelter, one of multiple places in Panama where these migrants are trying to navigate life, in a country where they don't speak the language. 'Almost all of us are from different countries, but here we are like family, you know?' said the woman from Ethiopia. As she sat with CNN, mattresses on the floor lining the edges of the room, she said, 'We are together. Everyone is in distress. Everyone is in a bad situation.' Days after they were initially brought to a Panamanian hotel, the migrants were loaded onto buses again. They expected to be moved to another hotel, Ambo says. But the drive stretched on for hours, until they arrived at a facility over a hundred miles outside of Panama City on the outskirts of the Darién jungle near the border with Colombia. 'Are you going to kill us? Why are you bringing us here?' she recalled asking in fear, 'Bringing us in this place, a forest. What is going to happen to us?' Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an English teacher from Iran, remembers crying after being expelled from the United States on her February birthday. 'I changed my religion in Iran and the punishment of that is may be a long prison or at the end is death,' she told CNN. 'They took two of my friends from the underground church, so I understand it's time to go. The next is me,' she added. In February she was seen in a window of the migrant hotel with the words 'Help Us' written across the window. Days later she was at this Panamanian jungle camp, known as the San Vicente shelter, with over 100 other migrants who were in the same situation as hers. 'The food was really disgusting,' said Ghasemzadeh. 'The bathroom was really dirty, no privacy, no door,' she added. Salam said the water for bathing was not clean, causing hives to break out on her skin. She pulled up a pant leg to show the marks on her skin. 'All my body is like this,' she said. Panama's President José Raúl Mulino has repeatedly denied that authorities have violated the deportees' rights. Reached for comment about conditions at the camp, a spokesperson from the Panamanian Security Minister's office deferred to the International Office for Migration (IOM), which assists migrants. A spokesperson at IOM stressed, however, that handling the deportees is a 'government-led operation,' telling CNN 'we did not have direct involvement in the detention or restriction of movement of individuals.' Through every step of the way, attorneys for these migrants argue their rights were violated. 'Our claim is that America violated the right to seek asylum and by extension, by receiving them, the Panamanian government did the same thing,' said Silvia Serna Román, regional litigator for Mexico and Central America for the Global Strategic Litigation Council. 'Even though they all claim to be to be asylum seekers, they have never had their right to be heard,' she added. Serna Román is part of a group of international lawyers that filed a lawsuit against Panama on these alleged violations in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ian Kysel, who is also part of that group, has previously said they are exploring a range of further legal actions, including against US-specific entities and other countries that might be taking in deported or expelled US migrants. Panama has denied any wrongdoing in this saga. In early March, the Panamanian government released the over 100 migrants from the remote jungle camp, but gave them 30-day 'humanitarian' permits, extendable up to 90 days, to find another place to go or risk deportation from Panama. 'We're also trying to navigate the terms of those permits,' Serna Román explained. 'If they're only given 90 days and the 90 days come up then they might be forcibly removed and they might be like involuntarily be taken back to their countries and that's our concern,' she added. All the migrants CNN and CNN en Español spoke to said going back to their countries simply was not an option. 'Asylum means I'm not safe in my country, I need help. Just that. I'm not criminal. I'm educated person and just need help,' Ghasemzadeh explained. 'If I come back to my country, my government will kill me, so in Panama they are free to kill me,' she added. Aurelio Martinez, a spokesperson in Panama's security ministry, told CNN that after the 90-day period it would be studied whether to grant another extension or if their status would become illegal. When CNN pressed on whether that could trigger forcible repatriation, Martinez simply said they will review each case individually, that Panama always supports migrants and human rights, and that they intend to maintain that support and commitment. Ambo, her life now in a demoralizing standstill, still dreams about the United States, even though she has no idea when this nightmare will end. 'America has always been a country that received people from all over the whole world. I believe that is why many people are going towards the USA for to seek for asylum,' she said. 'They should listen to us and see if they can permit us to stay or not because when you don't listen to somebody, it means that human rights does not exist again in America.'
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
She was expelled from the United States, but still thought America would help. She was wrong
She asked to be identified only as 'Ambo,' out of fear of being recognized back in her home country. 'Life is very difficult for me,' she told CNN from a school-turned-shelter on a humidly hot day in Panama City, Panama. Over the ambient noise of blade fans attempting to cool the large room, she explained she left her native country of Cameroon due to 'political issues,' fearing that she would either be 'sentenced dead' or spend the rest of her life in prison if she stayed. She remembers arriving at the US-Mexico border on January 23 – three days after US President Trump's inauguration – after trekking through Central America and the dangerous Darién jungle. She turned herself in to United States Customs and Border Protection in hopes of making her case for asylum. By her count she spent 19 days in US custody, then finally got that chance – or so she thought. Just after midnight on February 13, by her recollection, she and other migrants were loaded onto a bus where they drove for hours. 'We were so happy thinking that they were going to transfer us to a camp where we are going to meet an immigration officer,' she recalled. She still thought that when she was loaded onto a plane, believing they were headed to another facility in the United States. But when they landed, they were in Panama. 'We're asking them why are they bringing us to Panama? 'Why are we in Panama?'' she said, 'People started crying.' Even still, she was optimistic. 'We're like thinking maybe the camp in the US is full. That is why they are bringing us here. When it will be our turn, they will come and take us to give us a listening ear,' she said. But the Panamanian government took them to a hotel in Panama City, guarded tightly by security, no phones, and limited access to the outside world, according to multiple migrants CNN spoke to. Panama's Security Minister Frank Ábrego previously told a local radio program the deportees were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to 'effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.' Even in a new country, under a new government authority, she held out hope someone from the United States government would step in and fix the situation. 'We were somehow happy that maybe the immigration from the US would come to Panama to listen to our stories,' she told CNN, now fighting back tears. 'It wasn't the case.' Her voice cracked, recalling the moment her optimism shattered. This is the downstream reality of an increased immigration crackdown in the United States, which the Trump administration has pressured Latin American countries like Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador to help with. Just days before she arrived at the border, Trump had signed an executive order effectively shutting down the US-Mexico border to migrants seeking asylum in the United States. Weeks later, the Panamanian government agreed to receive some of those migrants, at least temporarily, and took in nearly 300. Many are asylum-seekers from places like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Sri Lanka. They are now are caught in limbo – expelled from the United States, but unable to go back to their home countries out of fear of being persecuted or killed. 'They shouldn't just like abandon us like that without telling us what we have done wrong. It become very, very difficult and confusing to us. I've left my children back home,' Ambo said through tears. Another woman from Ethiopia, was on a similar flight. She too requested not to use her name for fear of retaliation in her home country. 'I am so shocked. I'm saying this is Texas or Panama?' she recalled. She told CNN she too had trekked through Central America, injuring her leg in the Darién jungle, to reach the US-Mexico border. She said she too had left Ethiopia due to political issues and feared returning. 'I don't have family. They died already,' she told CNN. And a fellow asylum-seeker migrant Afghanistan, who did not want to share his identity, told CNN en Español's Elizabeth Gonzalez that if he were to return to Afghanistan, he would be killed by the Taliban. They all now live in a humble shelter, one of multiple places in Panama where these migrants are trying to navigate life, in a country where they don't speak the language. 'Almost all of us are from different countries, but here we are like family, you know?' said the woman from Ethiopia. As she sat with CNN, mattresses on the floor lining the edges of the room, she said, 'We are together. Everyone is in distress. Everyone is in a bad situation.' Days after they were initially brought to a Panamanian hotel, the migrants were loaded onto buses again. They expected to be moved to another hotel, Ambo says. But the drive stretched on for hours, until they arrived at a facility over a hundred miles outside of Panama City on the outskirts of the Darién jungle near the border with Colombia. 'Are you going to kill us? Why are you bringing us here?' she recalled asking in fear, 'Bringing us in this place, a forest. What is going to happen to us?' Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an English teacher from Iran, remembers crying after being expelled from the United States on her February birthday. 'I changed my religion in Iran and the punishment of that is may be a long prison or at the end is death,' she told CNN. 'They took two of my friends from the underground church, so I understand it's time to go. The next is me,' she added. In February she was seen in a window of the migrant hotel with the words 'Help Us' written across the window. Days later she was at this Panamanian jungle camp, known as the San Vicente shelter, with over 100 other migrants who were in the same situation as hers. 'The food was really disgusting,' said Ghasemzadeh. 'The bathroom was really dirty, no privacy, no door,' she added. Salam said the water for bathing was not clean, causing hives to break out on her skin. She pulled up a pant leg to show the marks on her skin. 'All my body is like this,' she said. Panama's President José Raúl Mulino has repeatedly denied that authorities have violated the deportees' rights. Reached for comment about conditions at the camp, a spokesperson from the Panamanian Security Minister's office deferred to the International Office for Migration (IOM), which assists migrants. A spokesperson at IOM stressed, however, that handling the deportees is a 'government-led operation,' telling CNN 'we did not have direct involvement in the detention or restriction of movement of individuals.' Through every step of the way, attorneys for these migrants argue their rights were violated. 'Our claim is that America violated the right to seek asylum and by extension, by receiving them, the Panamanian government did the same thing,' said Silvia Serna Román, regional litigator for Mexico and Central America for the Global Strategic Litigation Council. 'Even though they all claim to be to be asylum seekers, they have never had their right to be heard,' she added. Serna Román is part of a group of international lawyers that filed a lawsuit against Panama on these alleged violations in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ian Kysel, who is also part of that group, has previously said they are exploring a range of further legal actions, including against US-specific entities and other countries that might be taking in deported or expelled US migrants. Panama has denied any wrongdoing in this saga. In early March, the Panamanian government released the over 100 migrants from the remote jungle camp, but gave them 30-day 'humanitarian' permits, extendable up to 90 days, to find another place to go or risk deportation from Panama. 'We're also trying to navigate the terms of those permits,' Serna Román explained. 'If they're only given 90 days and the 90 days come up then they might be forcibly removed and they might be like involuntarily be taken back to their countries and that's our concern,' she added. All the migrants CNN and CNN en Español spoke to said going back to their countries simply was not an option. 'Asylum means I'm not safe in my country, I need help. Just that. I'm not criminal. I'm educated person and just need help,' Ghasemzadeh explained. 'If I come back to my country, my government will kill me, so in Panama they are free to kill me,' she added. Aurelio Martinez, a spokesperson in Panama's security ministry, told CNN that after the 90-day period it would be studied whether to grant another extension or if their status would become illegal. When CNN pressed on whether that could trigger forcible repatriation, Martinez simply said they will review each case individually, that Panama always supports migrants and human rights, and that they intend to maintain that support and commitment. Ambo, her life now in a demoralizing standstill, still dreams about the United States, even though she has no idea when this nightmare will end. 'America has always been a country that received people from all over the whole world. I believe that is why many people are going towards the USA for to seek for asylum,' she said. 'They should listen to us and see if they can permit us to stay or not because when you don't listen to somebody, it means that human rights does not exist again in America.'
