Panama will publish 112 migrants which had been expelled from the United States last month and which were detained in a jungle camp fell under conditions which, according to lawyers and defenders, violated Panamanian and international laws.
They come from countries to which the United States cannot easily return the deportees, often because these nations will not receive them.
Panama published temporary humanitarian passage of 30 days to migrants, with a possible extension of up to 90 days, to give them time to organize their return to their country of origin or to other countries ready to take them, the Minister of Safety of Panama, Frank ábrego said on Friday.
It was not clear if migrants would receive a kind of help once they were released.
The decision to release migrants could represent another challenge to President Trump’s efforts to expel millions of migrants from the United States.
In mid-February, when the United States began to send planns from people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Panama and Costa Rica-then these countries began to lock the deportees-it appeared that it had enlisted two flexible nations to help its ambitious deportation plans.
Images of people locked in a hotel in Panama seemed to be a potentially powerful deterrence for those who plan to migrate.
But Panama’s decision to release migrants suggests that it could be more difficult than Trump administration had hoped to press other nations to help them perform these mass expulsions.
Mr. Ábrego said that of the 299 migrants who had arrived from the United States, 177 had already voluntarily returned to their country of origin and that 10 others were waiting for flights to their homes.
The other 112, including several children, come from Afghanistan and Iran and had been detained for more than two weeks in a camp approximately four hours from the capital of Panama. They are said to be released in the coming days, Panamani officials said.
Persons detained in the United States who cannot be easily repatriated have a major obstacle to the Trump administration plan for major deportations.
Last month, the administration therefore found a bypass solution by exporting them to countries arranged to welcome them, such as Panama, which underwent huge pressure to appease Mr. Trump, who threatened to take over the Panama canal.
The migrants were transported by plane to Panama in mid-February and locked up for several days in a hotel in the city center. Those who have not agreed to be expelled in their country, or who could not easily be returned for logistical reasons, were transformed to a distant camp in eastern Panama, on the edge of the jungle known as Darién Gap.
The decision to release them comes as the president of Panama, Raúl Mulino, faces increasing pressures of human rights groups about the country’s decision to hold the group without accusations.
It also became obvious that it was going to be very difficult to expel some of the migrants – as Panama said pretended to do so – because many came from countries that have no diplomatic relations with the Nation of Central America.
If the Panama government had chosen to hold these people until it could expel them, it could have been holding them for months or more.
At the beginning of March, an international coalition of lawyers brought legal action against the Panama government before the Inter -American Commission on Human Rights claiming that the detention of migrants violated national and international laws, such as the American Convention on Human Rights.
Farnaz Fassihi Contributed reports.
