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

On 2/20/2025 2:13 AM, useapen wrote:
> 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

Thanks for the report. The migrants are better off in the tropical 
jungle than in the bitter cold streets of New York, Chicago or Denver 
right now.