More than 100 people deported by the United States have been held in a remote camp for weeks. Their release could pose a challenge to President Trump’s deportation efforts.
Panama will release 112 migrants who had been deported from the United States last month and were being held in a remote jungle camp, a minister said on Friday, after lawyers and advocates said the conditions violated Panamanian and international laws.
The migrants come from countries that the United States cannot easily return deportees to, often because those nations will not receive them.
Panama was issuing 30-day temporary humanitarian passes to the migrants to give them time to arrange their return to their homelands, or to other countries willing to take them, Panama’s security minister, Frank Ábrego, told reporters on Friday. He said the passes have a possible extension of up to 90 days.
The decision to release the migrants could represent another challenge to President Trump’s efforts to deport millions of migrants from the United States.
In mid-February, when the United States began sending planeloads of people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Panama and Costa Rica — and then those countries began locking up the deportees — it appeared that he had enlisted two pliant nations to help with his ambitious deportation plans.
The images of people locked in a hotel in Panama seemed a potentially powerful deterrent for those thinking about migrating to the United States.