Deported Migrants Held Captive in Panama Beg Last Minute Asylum
Panama wasn’t expecting the deported migrants to give them any trouble but they are. They didn’t have much choice in accepting them with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to take their beloved canal away. Things wouldn’t be so bad if they had stashed them at the jungle camp in Darien Gap as planned. They made the mistake of sheltering them in a comfy hotel where they could hold signs up to the windows. Now, some of them will need to have their asylum claims processed before they can be returned to nation of origin.
Migrants demanding asylum
Panama recently accepted a few deported migrants and they’re already regretting the decision. They have cell phones so hired lawyers.
The deportees are complaining loudly that “they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world.” They’re locked in for their own protection, the Panamanian government counters.
The fiasco started when roughly “300 migrants from Asia, all deported by the U.S., were held there by Panamanian authorities who agreed to take them in and eventually repatriate them.”
Since they’ve been attracting attention at the hotel, some of the deportees “have been transferred to a remote camp at the edge of a jungle that few can access.” Lawyers are going spastic. They can’t get paid without a signed retainer contract.
Some of the migrants who have been trickling in over the span of a week “didn’t even know they were being flown to another country until they actually landed in Panama.”octors Can't Explain but if You Have Toenail Fungus Try This Tonight
As they were herded aboard like cattle, someone told them they were headed for Texas. They were just as quickly herded off to the Decapolis Hotel.
Isolation and fear
One of the Panamanian lawyers is Jenny Soto Fernández. She’s hoping to represent “about 24 migrants from India and Iran.” If she can actually get their signature on the paperwork. Her clients, she complains, are “living in isolation, fear and uncertainty.”
None of them know their actual rights. They didn’t come with any “orders of removal upon being deported.” None of them speak Spanish and they’re all terrified of being “repatriated.”
One of attorney Ali Herischi’s prospective clients is Artemis Ghasemzadeh. The Iranian national “fled her country out of fear of persecution because of her conversion to Christianity.” The Ayatollah doesn’t like that.
“Under Islamic law, you cannot convert from Islam to any other religion.” She’s not the only one of the migrants who fear repercussions in their home country.
Panamanian officials are quick to assure the international community that “the migrants have the right to seek asylum because they’re fleeing persecution.” It sort of caught them by surprise because they thought they were just expediting travel.
“These people that are requesting refugee (status) — it’s not because they want to come here on an adventure or a trip. No, they’re escaping. They’re victims of violence and persecution.” Hopefully some other country will take them off their hands soon. In the meantime, the migrants are being transferred to a jungle camp where they won’t attract as much attention. Only mosquitoes.
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