Migrants Deported From U.S. to Panama
Officials in Panama said on Tuesday, February 18th that more than 170 of 299 people being held in Panama temporarily have agreed to be deported to their countries of origin.
Those who had not agreed to be deported will be relocated from the Decapolis Hotel in Panama City, where they are currently being held, to a camp in the Darién Gap.
The migrants were deported from the U.S. for illegal U.S. border crossing by The Trump administration which has pressed countries in Latin America to accept those migrants. At the moment, the two countries known to have accepted migrants are Panama and Costa Rica.
Panama’s security minister, Frank Ábrego said Tuesday that the migrants would remain at the camp, San Vicente, until they were offered asylum in a third country “where they felt safe.”
Mr. Ábrego said at the news conference that his government was keeping the migrants in the hotel to “guarantee security and peace for Panamanian citizens.”
Last week, Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, described the migrants as “having no criminal records.”
In his news conference Mr. Ábrego repeatedly pointed to the United Nations agencies that are charged with responding to the needs of the migrants deported to Panama under Panama’s agreements with the United States: the International Organization for Migration, or I.O.M., and U.N.H.C.R., or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also known as the U.N. Refugee Agency.
The security minister said the deportees were only in temporary custody of Panamanian officials. “Custody sounds bad,” he said. “They’re under our protection.”
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