By Elida Moreno
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) – A group of migrants deported from the U.S. to Panama last week were moved on Tuesday night from a hotel in the capital to the Darien jungle region in the south of the country, a lawyer representing a migrant family told Reuters on Wednesday.
Susana Sabalza, a Panamanian migration lawyer, said the family she represents was transferred to Meteti, a town in the Darien, along with other deported migrants.
La Estrella de Panama, a local daily, reported on Wednesday that 170 of the 299 migrants who had been in the hotel were moved to the Darien.
Panama’s government did not respond to a request for comment.
The 299 migrants have been staying at a hotel in Panama City under the protection of local authorities and with the financial support of the United States through the U.N.-related International Organization for Migration and the U.N. refugee agency, according to the Panamanian government.
The migrants include people from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, according to Panama’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, who has agreed with the U.S. to receive non-Panamanian deportees.
The deportation of non-Panamanian migrants to Panama is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to ramp up deportations of migrants living in the U.S. illegally.
One of the challenges to Trump’s plan is that some migrants come from countries that refuse to accept U.S. deportation flights, due to strained diplomatic relations or other reasons. The arrangement with Panama allows the U.S. to deport these nationalities and makes it Panama’s responsibility to organize their onward repatriation.
The process has been criticized by human rights groups that worry migrants could be mistreated and also fear for their safety if they are ultimately returned to violent or war-torn countries of origin, such as Afghanistan.
Sabalza said she had not been able to see her clients while they were held at the hotel in Panama City and said she is seeking permission to visit them at their new location. She declined to identify their nationality, but said they were a Muslim family who “could be decapitated” if they returned home.
Sabalza said the family would be requesting asylum in Panama or “any country that will receive them other than their own.”
Mulino said previously the migrants would be moved to a shelter in the Darien region, which includes the dense and lawless jungle separating Central America from South America that has in recent years become a corridor for hundreds of thousands of migrants aiming to reach the United States.
Panama’s security minister said on Tuesday that more than half of the migrants deported from the United States in recent days had accepted voluntary repatriations to their home countries.
On Wednesday morning the hotel in Panama City where the migrants had been held appeared quiet, according to a Reuters witness.
On Tuesday some migrants had been seen holding hands and looking out a window of the hotel to get the attention of reporters outside.
Migrants in the hotel were not allowed to leave, according to media reports.
On Wednesday, Panama’s migration service said in a statement that a Chinese national, Zheng Lijuan, had escaped from the hotel. It asked that Lijuan return and accused unspecified people outside the hotel of aiding his escape.
(Reporting by Elida Moreno in Panama City; writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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