170 Migrants Deported From U.S. Agree to Return to Home Countries, Panama Says

Nearly a week after the United States sent roughly 300 migrants from around the world to Panama on military deportation flights, officials in Panama said on Tuesday that more than 170 had agreed to be deported to their countries of origin.

The migrants are illegal U.S. border crossers whose countries of origin — mainly in Asia, the Middle East and Africa — either do not accept deportation flights or take them sparingly. The Trump administration has been pressing countries in Latin America to accept those migrants as it steps up deportations amid a crackdown on unauthorized immigration. To date, only Panama and Costa Rica are known to have accepted such migrants.

In Panama, the migrants have been locked in a soaring, glass-paneled downtown hotel, the Decapolis Hotel Panama. Reporters from The New York Times managed to speak to several people there — including some from Iran and China — who said they had left their countries for the United States because their lives were in danger.

Around 150 migrants who had not agreed to be deported would be relocated from the hotel to a camp near the jungle known as the Darién Gap, according to Panama’s security minister, Frank Ábrego. He said at a news conference on Tuesday that the migrants would remain at the camp, San Vicente, until they were offered asylum in a third country “where they felt safe.”

Mr. Ábrego said that no one had applied for asylum in Panama.

Panamanian authorities have not permitted the deportees to leave the hotel, and a lawyer seeking to represent several migrants, Jenny Soto Fernández, told The Times that officials had blocked her from entering the building at least four times.

In an interview, Ms. Soto said that several migrants from Iran had asked for her help in applying for refugee status in Panama. “I have all the legal documents ready,” she said, adding that she was “still not able to get to” the people.

Mr. Ábrego said at the news conference that his government was keeping the migrants in the hotel in an effort to “guarantee security and peace for Panamanian citizens.”

Last week, Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, described the migrants as “having no criminal records.”

Mr. Ábrego said that, of the more than 170 migrants who had signed orders authorizing their deportation, around 20 were expected to depart for their home countries in the next week. He said one deportee in the group, from Ireland, had already returned home.

Questions at Tuesday’s news conference focused largely on the accounts of migrants in the hotel that were gathered by The Times.

Asked by reporters about a deportee’s suicide attempt, which was recounted to Times reporters by several people, Mr. Ábrego said he had no prior knowledge of it. He said a migrant who was said to have broken a leg trying to escape from the hotel had twisted an ankle on a staircase.

Mr. Ábrego repeatedly pointed to the United Nations agencies that are charged with responding to the needs of the migrants deported to Panama under Panama’s agreements with the United States: the International Organization for Migration, or I.O.M., and U.N.H.C.R., or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also known as the U.N. Refugee Agency.

The security minister said the deportees were only in temporary custody of Panamanian officials. “Custody sounds bad,” he said. “They’re under our protection.”

Annie Correal reported from Mexico City and Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia. Alex E. Hernández contributed reporting from Panama City.