When the first newly released migrants buses arrived this month in Panama, from a detention field located on the edge of the jungle, three people were visibly ill. One needed HIV treatment, said a lawyer, another had run out of insulin and a third suffered seizures.
They reigned confusion, chaos and fear. “What am I going to do?” A migrant wondered aloud. “Where am I going?”
These are questions that do tens of migrants deported to Panama last month by the Government of Donald Trump, as part of the president’s wide efforts to expel millions of people from the United States.
At first, Panamanian officials had locked the group of about 300 people in a hotel. Then, those who did not accept the repatriation to their countries of origin were sent to a guarded camp on the edge of a jungle. Finally, after a lawsuit and the protest of human rights organizations, the Panamanian authorities released the deportees and sent them by bus back to Panama City.
Now, the migrants who remain – proMedents of Iran, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and other countries – are free but stranded in a nation that does not want them, many sleeping in the gymnasium of a school made available by a group of help, without knowing very well what to do next.
Interviews with 25 of the deportees offer a revealing vision of who is expelling the Trump government of the United States and what happens to them once they arrive in Central America.
The region has emerged as a key gear in deportation machinery that President Donald Trump is trying to implement.
But Washington’s decision to send migrants from all over the world to Central America has also raised legal issues, has tested governments that they are apparently not prepared to receive migrants and has left people stranded in nations where they do not have support networks or a long -term legal situation.
Most migrants in Panama said that when they arrived in the United States they told officials who were going to return to their countries, but they were never given the opportunity to formally ask.
A spokeswoman for the National Security Department, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an email that migrants had been “properly expelled” from the United States. He added that “not one of these foreigners claimed fear of returning to their country of origin at any time during processing or custody.”
“The US government coordinated so that the well -being of these foreigners was also managed by humanitarian groups in Panama,” he said.
Since he assumed the position, Trump has sent hundreds of migrants around the world to Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador, although it is not clear if the US government plans to continue doing so.
“If there are going to be more planes or not from the United States, I honestly don’t know,” said Panama President Raúl Mulino this month. “I don’t have much disposition to do it because they leave us with the problem.”
Among those who are now stranded in Panama is Hedayatullah Zazai, a 34 -year -old man who said he had served as an officer in the Afghan army, working together with the United States special forces and American consultants. After the Taliban took power, he fled to Pakistan, then to Iran, flew to Brazil and toured on foot South America and Central America to reach the American border.
Among those deported there are also Iranian Christians who claimed to be threatened in their country, and several Afghan women of the Haza ethnic minority who say they suffer persecution under the Taliban regime.
Another of those deported is Simegnat, 37, a woman Amara who was traveling alone from Ethiopia and said she had been persecuted by her government because her ethnicity originated the authorities who collaborated with a rebel group. He said he fled after his house burned, killing his father and his brother and the police told him that she would be the next.
“I was not a person who wanted to flee from my country,” he said. “I had a restaurant and a good life.”
“We are human, but we have nowhere to live,” he said, referring to the Amara people.
She and other migrants, fearing for the safety of their relatives in their countries of origin, asked not to be identified by their full names.
Most migrants described having crossed the border between Mexico and the United States earlier this year, having remained stopped about two weeks, having been chained by US officials and embarked on a plane with unknown destination. Some said they had been told that they were heading from California to Texas; The majority claimed that they were never given the opportunity to formally ask for asylum.
A 19 -year -old Afghan woman said the US authorities had allowed her parents and five younger brothers to cross the border with the United States. Being the only 18 -year -old daughter, they separated her from them, arrested her and took her by plane to Panama.
Some said they owed hundreds or thousands of dollars to people who helped finance their trips.
“If I return to Ethiopia without their money,” Simegnat said, “they would kill me.”
Panama has granted the deported 30 -day permits that allow them to remain in the country for the moment and have given them the option of expanding their 90 -day stay.
Although Panama has an asylum program, migrants have received contradictory messages about the probability of receiving long -term legal protection in the country.
Another option is to find another country that wraps them. But that would require a legal effort case by case, said Silvia Serna, a lawyer who is part of the team that filed a lawsuit that described as illegal the detention of migrants by Panama at the hotel and in the border field.
Serna said he had been interviewing migrants to see what help his team could offer them, but warned that it could be very difficult for people to find countries to receive them.
In the interviews, three of the deported Iranians said they planned to turn around and return to the United States and that they were already negotiating with a coyote. A room had already left for the American border.
One of them is Negin, 24, who identified himself as a gay woman from Iran, where openly homosexual people face the persecution of the government. “At least if I stayed with a crossed arms for a long time,” he said, “I will be inside an American detention and American land.”
The coyote offered a woman a price of US $ 5,000 for crossing the border between the United States and Mexico in Tijuana, and US $ 8,000 for getting a visa and embarking on a plane to Canada.
For now, most of the group is housed in the gym of a school turned into a refuge on the outskirts of Panama City and managed by two Christian beneficial organizations. Migrants sleep in thin mats and eat in plastic foam containers. A group of them was door to door to several embassies this week asking for help, but said they had been rejected in all of them.
Elías Cornego, who works with one of the aid, Fe y Alegría groups, did not spare the criticism of the new US government.
“We consider that Trump’s government policies are part of a machinery that moves the migrant like flesh,” he said. “And that is evidently a serious problem of inhumanity.”
A smaller group of deportees, mostly families with children, has stayed at a Hotel in Panama City paid by UNICEF. Among them there is a married couple, Christians converts from Iran. One night, while his 8 -year -old son was crying inconsolate, both parents leaned over him, stroking his face.
“He doesn’t go to school and life has become repetitive to him,” said the child’s father.
The couple had considered illegally re -entering the United States, they said, and finally decided that they could not submit their son to more suffering. They maintain the hope that a lawyer of the Serna team can convince Trump’s government to grant them the entrance as persecuted Christians.
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If that doesn’t work, said the father, he was considering staying in Panama and was already looking for work.
Not far from the hotel, Artemis Ghashzadeh, another 27 -year -old Iranian Christian, entered a church with white walls and knelt into a bank. Ghashzadeh became a kind of group leader after publishing a video on the Internet from his arrest at the Hotel in Panama City, in which he asked the world for help.
He said that a priest had offered migrants collective homes to the northern city of Panama, where they would be welcome while remaining in the country. The houses have kitchens and they would not have a curfew, he added. I was considering the offer.
“I don’t know what will happen next,” said Ghasemzadeh. “I don’t know what my next step will be. At the moment, we are in the hands of God.”
Alex E. Hernández collaborated with reporting from Panama City, Ruhullah Khapalwak from Vancouver, British Columbia, and a New York Times journalist collaborated from Adís Abeba, Ethiopia.