Trump deportees left in limbo in Panama

If Salana is sent back to Afghanistan, she believes her fate is sealed. Over the past six months, despite her pleas, she has been repeatedly asked if she will board a repatriation flight. “I cry and I cry. I tell them I cannot go back – that I will be killed,” she says. “Every time I sleep, I have nightmares of it happening.”

Deportees trapped  

Salana is one of 299 migrants who were removed from the United States, flown to Panama aboard military planes. Their deportation marked one of the earliest actions under President Donald Trump’s third-country deportation agreement. While some of the migrants have since left Panama, many remain stranded. Most have had their asylum claims denied. “We are stuck. This is no life. We cannot move forwards,” says Sharity, a Nigerian deportee who fled her home country.

Deportee stories 

At 17, Salana was still a student when her family learned that a distant relative, a senior figure in the Taliban, wanted to marry her. “He was 57 and had two wives,” she told The Guardian, requesting a pseudonym for her protection. “I was 17, still a student. I was so scared.” With the support of her family, Salana fled Afghanistan. She moved through multiple cities before reaching Iran on a one-year visa. Eventually, she obtained a six-month visa for Brazil. When that expired, she joined others traveling north through Latin America, hoping to reach Canada. However by the time she crossed into the United States, Trump had made it back into office. “They put me in detention, it was like a jail. They took my phone, and we didn’t even have the right to take a shower,” she recalls. “I was shocked, but I kept thinking, at least now I am in a safe country.” Instead, Salana was put onboard a military plane. “They kept asking if I wanted to go back to Afghanistan. I cried and said I really miss my country, my family, my life before, but I can never go back.”

Deportee confinement 

Upon arrival in Panama, the deportees were held in a hotel guarded and cut off from the outside world. It was during this confinement, the migrants say, that they were given a choice — “go back to your country or stay detained here.” Those who refused were sent to a camp in the Darién Gap. There, they say, they spent weeks with no access to legal counsel or even basic phone calls. Only after a lawsuit and pressure from human rights organizations were they relocated to Panama City.

The aftermath 

The International Organization for Migration reported that 179 of the 299 deportees had returned to their home countries through a program called “assisted voluntary return.” However, Human Rights Watch said the “circumstances of their confinement and the ‘choices’ they were presented called into question the voluntariness of those returns.” Silvia Serna, a regional litigator, helped file a legal challenge to the migrants’ detention. “They counted on people opting for repatriation, or thought they could pressure them enough to repatriate,” she says. “As time passes, it’s become more clear that they never had a plan, and that they don’t particularly care that there isn’t a plan.”

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