Costa Rica and Panama officers take away passports and mobile phones of migrants, depriving them access to legal services and moving them between distant branches while fighting the logistics suddenly reversed the flow of migration.
In her first month, Trump’s administration ordered Pentagon and the Ministry of Internal Security to prepare a migrant facility in Guantanamo Bay for as many as 30,000 migrants, though only a small number of this Navy based on Cuba has been sent so far, which has been active for two decades as US prison for high security for foreign terrorism.
The administration also reached a contract with Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador to act as a stop or destination for migrants expelled from the USA, but none of the agreements are detailed for the public, raising concerns about avoiding international protection for the refugees and asylum seekers.
Panama and Costa Rica, long transit countries for people migrating north, clashed to solve the new flow of migrants who go south and organize flow.
But now both countries have received hundreds of deported from various countries that have sent the United States because President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to accelerate the deportations. At the same time, thousands of now migrants from the United States began to move south through Central America – Panama recorded 2,200 in February.
“We are a reflection of the current immigration policy of the United States,” said Harold Villegas-Roman, a political science professor and a refugee expert at the University of Kostarika. “There is no focus on human rights, there is only a focus on control and security. Everything is very blurry, not transparent.”
US Defense Minister Pete Hegsetth spoke with Fox News analyst Will Cain 29. January 2025. On the upcoming US President Donald Trump’s plans to prepare a guantamo migrant facility for tens of thousands of migrants. Although Trump said that the US would “delay the worst criminal illegal aliens that threaten the American people,” the object will be separated from the custody center.
Probably not the final destination
Earlier this month, the US sent 299 deports from mostly Asian countries in Panama. Those who are willing to return to their countries – to date around 150 – have been put on planes with the help of United Nations agencies and have paid the US
Carlos Ruiz-Hernandez, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Panama, said on Thursday that there were a small number in contact with international organizations and UN’s refugee agency, as they were weighing whether he would seek asylum in Panama.
“None of them want to stay in Panama. They want to go to the US,” he said in a telephone conversation from Washington. “We cannot give them green cards, but we can bring them home and give them medical and psychological support for a short time, as well as housing.”
Despite Trump’s threats that he would take control of the Panaman channel, he said that Panama had not acted under pressure from the United States.
“This is in the national interest of Panama. We are a friend of now -Ai we want to work with them to send a distracting signal.”
Ruiz-Hernandez said that some of the deported deported in Panama would be given the opportunity to stay in a shelter that was originally set up to resolve a large number of migrants moving north through Darien Gap.
One Chinese deportic, which was currently detained at the camp, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid the consequences, said he did not receive her choice.
She was deported in Panama without knowing where they were sent to them, without signing documents on deportation in the USA -without clarity how long she would be there. She was among the deports that were moved from the Panama City Hotel, where some kept the inscriptions on their windows seeking assistance in a remote camp in Darien in the region.
Talking to APs about the messages on the cellphone she held hidden, she said that the authorities seized others’ phones and did not offer them legal assistance. Others said they could not contact their lawyers.
“That took us away from our legal procedure,” she said.
At the White House briefing, the print secretary of Caroline Leavitt said that Trump’s administration believed that the migrant who had entered the United States illegally “criminal”.
Panama President Jose Raul Mulino, asked about a lack of access to legal services on Thursday, questioned the idea that migrants would even have lawyers.
“Panama cannot become a black hole for deported migrants,” said Juan Pappier, Deputy Director Human Rights Watch, America. “Migrants have the right to communicate with their families, seek lawyers, and Panama must guarantee transparency because of the situation they are in.”
Venezuela migrants feel “hopelessness”
In the meantime, Costa Rica faced criticism of an independent human rights entity in the country, which raised an alarm over the “failures” of the authorities to guarantee the appropriate conditions for the deportation of coming. The Ombudsman’s shooting office said that they had taken their passports and other documents to migrants and were not informed of what was happening or where they were going.
Among them was Kimberlyn Pereira, 27-year-old Venezuelan who traveled with her husband and a four-year-old son.
Pereira has been waiting for the appointment of asylum in Mexico for months after crossing the dangerous Darien Gap, which shared Colombia and Panama and traveled through Central America. But after Trump assumed his duty and closed the legal paths so far, she gave up and decided to go home, despite the constant crises of Venezuela.
But after a week of holding in the Costa Rica’s custody near the Panama border, she expressed “hopelessness”.
Officials there told them they would be taken to Cucuta, a Colombian city near the Venezuelan border. But they were loaded on the buses and took to the Panama Port Miramar on the Caribbean Sea.
Before dawn on Thursday, Pereira and other migrants boarded the wooden ships transporting them near the Panama Colombia border, where they planned to continue their journey. They paid an equivalent of $ 200 for a ride.
