Mellona Takie can barely make it through a game of Uno these days, though on a recent afternoon she tries. Anything to keep her mind from going to a place so dark that she tried to take her own life in February, after the United States deported her, an East African, to Panama.
“Even if I see something good, in my eyes, it’s bad,” says the woman in her late 20s, who fled mandatory military service in Eritrea, under a totalitarian government, and planned to seek political asylum in the U.S.
Ms. Takie was among 299 people, mostly from countries that wouldn’t or couldn’t accept deportations from the U.S., who were sent on three planes to Panama City between Feb. 12 and 15. They didn’t know where they were until they disembarked and saw migration officials with the word “Panama” printed on their uniforms. Most had assumed they were being flown to another city inside the U.S. Once in Panama, the deportees were detained in hotel rooms in the capital and later in a bare-bones jungle camp, barred from access to phones, lawyers, media, and medical care.
Why We Wrote This
The United States says it doesn’t want migrants and refugees. But “third countries” like Panama that have agreed to accept them have taken on a greater task than they bargained for.
With President Donald Trump’s move to deport foreigners – often without due process – to prisons in El Salvador and into the hands of unprepared governments in other Central American countries, Panama has emerged as a case study in the perils and pressures faced by what are being called “third countries.”
Like most of Central America, Panama has not traditionally served as a destination for migrants or asylum-seekers, and its policies are relatively untested. Yet serving as a bridge for America’s deportees has not relieved U.S. pressure on the country when it comes to tariffs or resource management.
In the span of two months, Panama has been hit with lawsuits and injunctions in domestic courts and regional commissions for how it treated the arrival of these individuals – including children – originating from as far away as Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
“We want states in the region to push back against unlawful things they might be compelled to do by the Trump administration,” says Ian Kysel, lead counsel in a petition brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of more than 100 individuals detained without cause by Panama.
“It’s appropriate for states to collaborate on how to respond to migration,” says Mr. Kysel, who teaches at Cornell Law School. “But the first principle of that has to be to ensure that the rights of all migrants are protected.”
Living in a gym
None of those deported to Panama had criminal records, according to the Panamanian government. But their freedom of movement was blocked. Their phones were confiscated, and they were denied medical and legal attention. It took Panama nearly a month to grant them temporary humanitarian visas.
This isn’t the first time the U.S. has deported asylum-seekers to third countries. During Mr. Trump’s first administration, in a pilot that ended with the pandemic, he sent some Central Americans to Guatemala. But that time, those deportees were not detained, and they maintained control over their identification documents.
Today roughly 60 deportees remain in Panama, according to those assisting them. The majority are now in a gymnasium in the capital, run by the religious organization Fe y Alegría. The bathroom cleaning chart assigns days by country: those from Guinea tidy up on Wednesday, Ethiopians on Thursday, and Chinese on Friday.
Since arriving at the shelter March 12, they can now come and go as they please, use their cellphones, and seek lawyers. But their emotional limbo is acute. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next because it overwhelms me to think about it,” says Fortune, from Cameroon, who asked to to be referred to only by her first name for security reasons.
“I can’t stay here – everything I’ve been through in Panama makes me feel unsafe. I can’t go to the U.S., and I can’t go home,” she says. “I’m stuck in every sense of the word.”
The deportees were issued 30-day temporary humanitarian visas by the Panamanian government March 7 that were extended this month. They will be offered one more 30-day extension, according to the government.
President José Raúl Mulino denied in a press conference on Feb. 20 that accepting the deportees from the U.S. broke laws. His government was only “facilitating” and surveilling the transport of migrants to the facilities where they were being held, he said.
Central American countries have historically been points of transit, says Silvia Serna Román, the Latin America point person for the Global Strategic Litigation Council (GSLC), a coalition of lawyers and advocates worldwide fighting for refugee rights. Thus, their asylum systems get little use compared with those of the U.S. or even Mexico, where asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years.
“In this case it’s ironic that [Panama] literally decided to be a destination, and still doesn’t think of itself as a destination,” says Ms. Serna, a lawyer. “If you don’t see the whole picture, then you can’t foresee the consequences.”
Legal pressure mounts
When the flights arrived in February, the deportees were taken to a high-end hotel in the capital, where their rooms were stripped of phones, mirrors, and anything that could be used in a suicide attempt. Still, several tried, according to migrant accounts. More than 175 people were returned to their countries of origin. Those who remained in Panama were later shuttled to the jungle, where lawyers and aid workers were blocked from accessing their camp.
At least two lawsuits related to the detentions were presented before Panamanian courts in February against the ministry of public security and the migration agency.
Outside Panama, lawyers and refugee rights advocates had been preparing for this moment since Mr. Trump’s November reelection, as part of the GSLC.
The group is fighting in local courts and regional commissions and bodies, like the United Nations and the Organization of American States. This month, they filed an emergency appeal with the U.N.’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of people deported from the U.S. to Costa Rica in February, and another emergency lawsuit to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, challenging the deportation and detention conditions of more than 80 children. In Costa Rica, more than 100 deportees are still being held in a detention camp without access to their passports and other documents. GSLC says it has not ruled out a litigation strategy in El Salvador.
But they first focused their efforts on Panama, because those detentions were made public first, via a New York Times investigation.
The GSLC’s petition brought to the IACHR in March alleged that Panama violated these individuals’ rights to seek asylum, preserve their personal liberty, and not be expelled to a country where their life is in danger. It also made a request for “precautionary measures,” essentially an injunction, at the IACHR, to halt deportations from Panama and release the group from the jungle.
A week later, Panama announced it would do both, an indication that the legal efforts, still ongoing, have been successful.
Nations such as Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador that have agreed to serve as third countries have sought their own political leverage with the U.S. But it isn’t clear that’s worked.
El Salvador, caught in legal brouhaha over the case of erroneously deported Kilmar Ábrego García, has received a reported $6 million from the U.S. to imprison deportees. All three countries were hit with the United States’ baseline 10% “Liberation Day” tariffs.
“Panama wanted to provide a show of good will [toward the U.S.] by receiving deportees, but it backfired,” says Diego Chaves-González, senior manager of the Latin America and Caribbean Initiative at the Migration Policy Institute. Mr. Trump continues to put pressure on the country over issues like the Panama Canal, for example. This month, the U.S. secretary of defense suggested the U.S. deploy troops in Panama.
Fortune, the Cameroonian asylum-seeker, suggests that the U.S. isn’t a clear-cut winner in this either. “What gives the United States so much power?” she asks, lying on a mattress on the floor of the Fe y Alegría shelter in late March. “It’s not its wealth,” she says, as she checks her phone for messages from loved ones back in West Africa. “It’s the ability to care for those in danger.”
