“Please help us”, “we are not safe in our country,” read messages flashed by women from the window of a hotel in Panama City, where 299 migrants, including Indians, deported by the United States recently are being detained.
Deprived of the liberty to leave, the migrants remain stuck in Decapolis Hotel in the Panamanian capital as they wait for international authorities to arrange their return to their homeland.
The migrants mostly hail from 10 Asian countries, including India, Iran, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China.
According to authorities, over 40 per cent of the migrants are not ready to return voluntarily to their countries.
The US has difficulty deporting directly to some of those countries so Panama is being used as a stopover. Costa Rica was expected to receive a similar flight of third-country deportees on Wednesday.
Panama's Security Minister Frank Abrego said on Tuesday the migrants are receiving medical attention and food as part of a migration agreement between Panama and the US.
Also read: US seeks India's help to serve Adanis in $250m 'bribery' case
The Panamanian government has now agreed to serve as a “bridge” or transit country for deportees, while the US bears all the costs of the operation. The agreement was announced earlier this month after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino, who faces political pressure over Trump's threats of retaking control of the Panama Canal, announced the arrival of the first of the deportation flights last Thursday.
The confinement and legal limbo the deportees face has raised alarm in the Central American country, especially as images spread of migrants peaking through the windows of their rooms on high floors of the hotel and displaying the notes pleading for help.
Abrego denied the foreigners are being detained even though they cannot leave the rooms of their hotel, which is being guarded by police.
Abrego said that 171 of the 299 deportees have agreed to return voluntarily to their respective countries with help from the International Organisation for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency. UN agencies are talking with the other 128 migrants in an effort to find a destination for them in third countries. Abrego said that one deported Irish citizen has already returned to her country.
Those who do not agree to return to their countries will be temporarily held in a facility in the remote Darien province through which hundreds of thousands of migrants have crossed on their journey north in recent years, Abrego said.
The Panamanian Ombudsman's Office was scheduled to provide more details on the deportees' situation later Tuesday.
Follow us
