Migrants, Deported to Panama Under Trump Plan, Detained in Remote Jungle Camp

Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama 
where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday 
night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, 
several of the migrants said.

It is unclear how long the group, which was deported under the Trump 
administration’s sweeping effort to expel unauthorized migrants, will be 
detained at the jungle camp.

Conditions at the site are primitive, the detainees said. Diseases, 
including dengue are endemic to the region, and the government has denied 
access to journalists and aid organizations.

“It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” said one deportee, Artemis 
Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old 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.”

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.

Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, confirmed that 97 
people had been transferred to the camp. “They are not detainees,’’ he 
said. “It’s a migrant camp where they will be taken care off — not a 
detention camp.”

Mr. Ruiz-Hernández said the camp was the best option available to the 
government for housing migrants and noted that the migrants had food, 
water and access to medical and psychological care. He said there were no 
cages.

In a broadcast interview on Wednesday with the news program Panamá En 
Directo, the country’s security minister, Frank Ábrego, 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 to seek asylum. 
The group was sent to Panama, which has agreed to aid President Trump in 
his plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants.

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 convince Panama to take some of them.

Last week, Mr. Ruiz-Hernández, the deputy foreign minister, said Panama 
was complying with a direct request from the Trump administration to 
accept the migrants.

Analysts say Panama is also under intense pressure from Mr. Trump, who has 
threatened to seize the Panama Canal over what he believes is Chinese 
influence in the waterway, a claim that Panama’s president has repeatedly 
refuted.

After being sent to Panama, the deported migrants are no longer subject to 
United States 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 was 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 New York 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 enormous 
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 Ms. 
Ghasemzadeh, one of the Christian converts from Iran. Several buses 
arrived and guards led them aboard, as witnessed by a reporter working for 
The New York Times.

The migrants were initially told they would be taken to another hotel, Ms. 
Ghasemzadeh said, and some feared they were really being deported back to 
Iran.

Instead, the buses passed the airport and then snaked their way to a 
highway, traveling out of Panama City, east and then farther east, to the 
province of Darién.

Two migrants used their cellphones to share their real-time location with 
The Times, allowing reporters to track their movements.

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.

One Iranian woman, the mother of an 8-year-old, cried during the bus ride. 
Her child had been sick with a sore throat for days, she said, and the 
uncertainty and constant displacement was taking a toll on her.

Upon arrival, Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she could see large containers that 
appeared to be the migrants’ new homes. Officials instructed them to fill 
out forms with their names, and asked for fingerprints, she said.

On Tuesday, Mr. 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.

Responding to migrants’ accounts that many people’s cellphones and 
documents, including passports, had been confiscated, Mr. Ábrego said that 
those items had been taken while the migrants were in U.S. custody.

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 on Wednesday that one of the migrants in their 
custody, a woman from China, had escaped from the hotel, where dozens of 
migrants remain.

In a message posted to X, the country’s migration service asked for help 
in finding her, saying the authorities feared she would fall into the 
hands of human traffickers.

“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.

Many migrants who remain in the hotel — including some from India and 
Eastern Europe — have signed documents authorizing their deportation and 
are expected to be sent to their countries of origin in the coming days.

On Wednesday morning, from the Darién region, Ms. Ghasemzadeh described a 
sweltering encampment, overrun with cats and dogs.

Then, she sent a text message saying that she feared authorities would 
soon take her phone. “Please try to help us,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/world/americas/us-migrants-panama-
jungle-camp.html