CARTI, Panama (AP) — A deportee from the United States detained in a camp in rural Panama, among a hundred who refused to return to their countries, described on Saturday waiting in limbo under “harsh conditions” and cut off from access to legal council and other rights.
The Chinese deportee, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation by Panamanian authorities, spoke to the Associated Press with a hidden cellphone after being connected through a concerned relative.
The woman said authorities were seizing the phones of migrants in the camp and effectively cutting them off. Migrants were from Asian nations, Russia, Afghanistan and Nepal, she said.
The migrant said that people in the camp were having their personal freedoms restricted, and that migrants faced both poor conditions in the camp and a strict vigilance from guards.
"Someone follows me even when I go to the toilet," she said.
Panamanian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the AP.
The testimony comes after an uproar in Panama this week over the treatment of nearly 300 migrants who were deported from the United States and are being held in Panama as authorities return them to their own countries.
It's part of a deal struck with the Trump administration in which countries like Panama and Costa Rica act as “bridges,” temporarily detaining deportees.
Originally, the migrants were locked up in hotel rooms by authorities in the country's capital, Panama City. Panama denied that they were detained, but migrants were not allowed to leave their hotel and were guarded by police.
A number of migrants help up signs reading “please help us” and “We are not save (sic) in our country.”
Around 40% of the migrants refused to return to their countries, many citing fear of returning. Those who are willing to return home remained at the hotel, and 13 have already been returned, according to authorities.
Those who refused have been sent to a rural migrant camp the southern Darien province, near the Darien Gap a perilous jungle migrant passage between Panama and Colombia.
The camp, located near a small town known as San Vicente, Metetí, was originally constructed as a migrant reception center built to address the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants traveling north through the Darien Gap in recent years. Though much of that traffic north has since petered off.
Organizations like the UN agency International Organization for Migration (IOM) said they would organize “safe alternatives” for where to send the migrants now being sheltered in the camp.
“We do not have direct involvement in the detention or restriction of movement of individuals,” the IOM wrote in a statement.
The woman who spoke to the AP said she was held in a hotel for five days before being sent to the second refugee camp, and that she wanted to continue to the U.S. Upon being deported, she said she did not sign any deportation documents, a standard procedure.
She said that deportees are being “guarded like prisoners” in the Darien camp and that she believes they are being stripped of key rights, unable to access the outside world. They have no access to outside legal assistance, she said, and have received no offers of legal advice from authorities.
"But the Panamanian government kept asking us where to go," she said.
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Delacroix reported from Carti, Panama. Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
