Cartí, Panama (AP) – A person deported from the United States detained in a camp in a rural area of Panama, between a hundred who refused to return to their countries, described on Saturday the wait in the limbo under “harsh conditions” and without access to legal advice and other rights.
The deported China, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from the Panamanian authorities, spoke with The Associated Press with a mobile phone that had been hidden after being connected through a worried family member.
The woman said the authorities were confiscating migrant phones in the camp and were effectively disconnected. The migrants were from Asian nations, Russia, Afghanistan and Nepal, he said.
The migrant indicated that people in the camp were seeing their personal freedoms restricted, and that they faced both bad conditions in the camp and a strict surveillance by the guards.
“Someone follows me even when I go to the bathroom,” he said.
Panamanian authorities have not responded at the moment to a request for comments from the AP.
This testimony arises after the outrage caused this week in Panama due to the treatment given to almost 300 deported migrants from the United States and retained in Panama while the authorities return them to their countries of origin.
It is part of an agreement established with the Trump government in which countries such as Panama and Costa Rica act as “bridges”, temporarily stopping those deported.
Originally, migrants were locked in hotel rooms by the authorities in the capital of the country, Panama City. Panama denied that they were detained, but the migrants could not leave their hotel and were guarded by the police.
Several migrants held posters that said “please, help us” and “we are not sure in our country.”
About 40% of migrants refused to return to their countries, many citing fear of returning. Those who are willing to return home remained at the hotel, and 13 have already been returned, according to the authorities.
Those who refused have been sent to a rural camp for migrants in the province of Darién, to the south, near the Darién cap, a dangerous migratory passage in the jungle between Panama and Colombia.
The camp, located near a small town known as San Vicente, Metetí, was originally built as a migrant reception center to address the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants traveling north through the Darién cap in recent years in recent years . Although much of that traffic to the north has decreased since then.
Organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IIM), of the UN, said they would organize “safe alternatives” to send to migrants now refugees in the camp.
“We have no direct participation in the detention or restriction of the movement of individuals,” the IOM wrote in a statement.
The woman who spoke with the AP said she was arrested at a hotel for five days before being sent to the second refugee camp, and that she wanted to continue to the United States. When deported, he said he did not sign any deportation document, a standard procedure.
He affirmed that the deportees are being “guarded as prisoners” in the Darién camp and that they believe they are stripping of fundamental rights, unable to access the outside world. They do not have access to external legal advice, he said, and have not received legal advisory offers from the authorities.
“But the Panamanian government kept asking us where to go,” he said.
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Delacroix reported from Cartí, Panama. Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
This article was published by Matias Delacroix,Megan Janetsky on 2025-02-22 19:30:00
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