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“Yesterday a flight from the United States Air Force arrived
with 119 people from diverse nationalities of the world,”
President José Raúl Mulino said Thursday in his weekly press
briefing. He said there were migrants from China, Uzbekistan,
Pakistan and Afghanistan, among others, aboard.
The president said it was the first of three planned flights
that were expected to total about 360 people. “It’s not
something massive,” he said.
The migrants were expected to be moved to a shelter in Panama’s
Darien region before being returned to their countries, Mulino
said.
Asked later Thursday why Panama was acting as a stopover for
these deportations, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ruiz
Hernández said that it was something the U.S. government had
requested. He also said the U.S. government was paying for the
repatriations through U.N. immigration agencies.
The migrants who arrived Wednesday, had been detained after
crossing the U.S. border and did not have criminal records, he
said.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Mulino
in Panama. While U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands to retake
control of the Panama Canal dominated the visit, Mulino also
discussed Panama’s efforts to slow migration through the Darien
Gap and he offered Panama as a bridge to send U.S. deportees
back to their countries.
Rubio secured agreements on the trip with Guatemala and El
Salvador as well, to accept migrants from other nations in what
was seen as the laying groundwork for expanding U.S. capacity to
speedily deport migrants.
Migration through the Darien Gap connecting Panama and Colombia
was down about 90% in January compared to the same month a year
earlier.
Since Mulino entered office last year, Panama has made dozens of
deportation flights, most funded by the U.S. government.
Ruiz said Thursday that Panama “has been completely willing to
participate and cooperate in this request they have made of us.”
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