Migrants, deported to Panama under Trump plan, detained in remote jungle camp

Nearly 100 migrants recently deported by the United States to Panama, where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said.

It is unclear how long the group, deported under the Trump administration's sweeping effort to expel migrants in the US without legal permission, will be detained at the jungle camp.

Conditions at the site are primitive, the detainees said. Diseases, including dengue, are endemic to the region, and the government has denied access to journalists and aid organizations.

"It looks like a zoo; there are fenced cages," said one deportee, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, after arriving at the camp following a four-hour drive from Panama City. "They gave us a stale piece of bread. We are sitting on the floor."

The group includes eight children, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the record. Lawyers have said it is illegal to detain people in Panama for more than 24 hours without a court order.

Panama's deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, confirmed that 97 people had been transferred to the camp. "They are not detainees,'' he said. "It's a migrant camp where they will be taken care off -- not a detention camp."

Ruiz-Hernández said the camp was the best option available to the government for housing migrants and noted that the migrants had food, water and access to medical and psychological care. He said there were no cages.

In a broadcast interview Wednesday with the news program Panamá En Directo, the country's security minister, Frank Ábrego said that migrants were being held by Panama "for their own protection" and because officials "need to verify who they are."

The transfer is the latest move in a weeklong saga for a group of about 300 migrants who arrived in the United States hoping to seek asylum. The group was sent to Panama, which has agreed to aid President Donald Trump in his plan to deport millions of migrants living in the U.S. without legal permission.

The agreement is part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to export some of its most difficult migration challenges to other nations. The United States, for varying reasons, cannot easily deport people to countries like Afghanistan, Iran and China, but by applying intense pressure, it has managed to persuade Panama to take some of them.

Last week, Ruiz-Hernández said Panama was complying with a direct request from the Trump administration to accept the migrants.

Analysts say Panama is also under intense pressure from Trump, who has threatened to seize the Panama Canal over what he believes is Chinese influence in the waterway, a claim that Panama's president has repeatedly refuted.

After being sent to Panama, the deported migrants are no longer subject to US law.

Costa Rica is also taking some deportees, including migrants originally from Central Asia and India, and has said it plans to repatriate them. A flight from the United States was expected to arrive in Costa Rica on Thursday.

Upon arrival in Panama City last week, the 300 or so migrants were taken to a downtown hotel, called the Decapolis, and barred from leaving, several of them told The New York Times in calls and text messages. A lawyer seeking to represent many of them, Jenny Soto Fernández, was blocked at least four times from visiting them in the hotel, she said.

At the hotel, the United Nations International Organization for Migration has been speaking with migrants about their options, according to the government, and offering flights to their home countries to those who want them.

Some, including a group of Iranian Christians and a man from China, told the Times that they risk reprisals if returned to their native countries and have refused to sign documents that would pave the way for their repatriation.

Under Iranian law, converting from Islam is considered apostasy and is a crime punishable by death.

On Tuesday morning, an article published by the Times attracted attention to the migrants' situation, and members of the Panamanian news media began surrounding the hotel.

That night, guards at the hotel told people to pack their bags, said Ghasemzadeh, one of the Christian converts from Iran. Several buses arrived, and guards led them aboard, as witnessed by a reporter working for the Times.

The migrants were initially told they would be taken to another hotel, Ghasemzadeh said, and some feared they were really being deported back to Iran.

Instead, the buses passed the airport and then snaked their way to a highway, traveling out of Panama City, east and then farther east, to the province of Darién.

Two migrants used their cellphones to share their real-time location with the Times, allowing reporters to track their movements.

The camp where the 100 or so migrants will stay is called San Vicente and sits at the end of a jungle, also called the Darién, which links Panama to Colombia. The camp was built years ago as a stopover point for migrants coming north from Colombia through the Darién jungle and into Panama, a harrowing part of the journey north to the United States.

Now the Panamanian government is using it for deportees.

One Iranian woman, the mother of an 8-year-old, cried during the bus ride. Her child had been sick with a sore throat for days, she said, and the uncertainty and constant displacement was taking a toll on her.

Upon arrival, Ghasemzadeh said she could see large containers that appeared to be the migrants' new homes. Officials instructed them to fill out forms with their names and asked for fingerprints, she said.

On Tuesday, Ábrego told reporters at a news conference that 170 of the 300 or so migrants had volunteered to be sent back to their countries of origin, journeys that would be arranged by the International Organization for Migration.

He described the decision to hold the migrants as part of an accord with the United States.

"What we agreed with the United States government is that they remain and are in our temporary custody for their protection," he said.

Responding to migrants' accounts that many people's cellphones and documents, including passports, had been confiscated, Ábrego said that those items had been taken while the migrants were in US custody.

On Wednesday, he said that 12 people from Uzbekistan and India had been repatriated with the help of the International Organization for Migration.

Officials also said Wednesday that one of the migrants in their custody, a woman from China, had escaped from the hotel, where dozens of migrants remain.

In a message posted to the social platform X, the country's migration service asked for help in finding her, saying authorities feared she would fall into the hands of human traffickers.

"As a State security entity," authorities wrote on X, "our commitment is to combat illegal migration" while complying with "national and international principles and regulations on human rights."

The Panamanian government has previously said the migrants had no criminal records.

Many migrants who remain in the hotel -- including some from India and Eastern Europe -- have signed documents authorizing their deportation and are expected to be sent to their countries of origin in the coming days.

On Wednesday morning, from the Darién region, Ghasemzadeh described a sweltering encampment, overrun with cats and dogs.

Then, she sent a text message saying that she feared authorities would soon take her phone. "Please try to help us," she said.