The US has sent undocumented immigrants from several Asian countries whose governments have refused to accept them to Panama, in a move signalling an intensification of the Trump administration’s deportation effort.
A military plane carrying 119 immigrants from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan flew from California to Panama City on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first of three migrants flights to the country.
The revelation that Panama has become a destination for immigrants from countries whose governments have not agreed to take them back follows repeated threats by Donald Trump to seize the Panama canal, whose ownership was handed to the Panamanian government in 1999 under the terms of a treaty signed with the US.
The agreement to accept migrants appears to have resulted from a visit to Panama last week by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.
José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, told reporters that the country had received “119 people from diverse nationalities of the world”.
The immigrants were being accommodated at a local hotel before being transported to a shelter near the Darién Gap, a jungle area in southern Panama, in a process managed by the International Organization for Migration.
“We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible,” Mulino said. “This is another contribution Panama is making on the migration issue.”
He said the migrants would eventually be transferred to their countries of origin on flights funded by the US.
Panama is the latest Central American nation to agree to accept immigrants of other countries expelled from the US after El Salvador and Guatemala offered similar arrangements.
CBS reported that a second flight containing Asian and African deportees was scheduled to have left for Panama on Thursday. The network, citing internal government documents, said the flight would include citizens from Cameroon.
The Darién Gap, dividing Panama from Colombia, has become a busy transit route for immigrants making their way through Central America en route to the US. In 2023, more than half a million immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, crossed the Darién jungle into Panama. The number reduced to 300,000 last year.
Source: theguardian.com
