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More than 40% of the migrants, authorities say, won’t
voluntarily return to their homeland. Migrants in the hotel
rooms held messages to the windows reading “Help” and “We are
not save (sic) in our country.”
The migrants hailed from 10 mostly Asian countries, including
Iran, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and
others. The U.S. has difficulty deporting directly to some of
those countries so Panama is being used as a stopover. Costa
Rica was expected to receive a similar flight of third-country
deportees on Wednesday.
Panama's Security Minister Frank Abrego said Tuesday the
migrants are receiving medical attention and food as part of a
migration agreement between Panama and the U.S.
The Panamanian government has now agreed to serve as a “bridge”
or transit country for deportees, while the U.S. bears all the
costs of the operation. The agreement was announced earlier this
month after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who faces political
pressure over Trump’s threats of retaking control of the Panama
Canal, announced the arrival of the first of the deportation
flights last Thursday.
The confinement and legal limbo the deportees face has raised
alarm in the Central American country, especially as images
spread of migrants peaking through the windows of their rooms on
high floors of the hotel and displaying the notes pleading for
help.
Abrego denied the foreigners are being detained even though they
cannot leave the rooms of their hotel, which is being guarded by
police.
Abrego said that 171 of the 299 deportees have agreed to return
voluntarily to their respective countries with help from the
International Organization for Migration and the U.N. Refugee
Agency. U.N. agencies are talking with the other 128 migrants in
an effort to find a destination for them in third countries.
Abrego said that one deported Irish citizen has already returned
to her country.
Those who do not agree to return to their countries will be
temporarily held in a facility in the remote Darien province
through which hundreds of thousands of migrants have crossed on
their journey north in recent years, Abrego said.
The Panamanian Ombudsman’s Office was scheduled to provide more
details on the deportees' situation later Tuesday.
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