Migrants, Deported to Panama Under Trump Plan, Detained in Remote Jungle Camp

Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said.

It is unclear how long the group, which was deported under the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to expel unauthorized migrants, will be detained at the jungle camp.

Conditions at the site are primitive, the detainees said. Diseases, including dengue are endemic to the region, and the government has denied access to journalists and aid organizations.

“It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” said one deportee, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old migrant from Iran, after arriving at the camp following a four-hour drive from Panama City. {snip}

The group includes eight children, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the record. Lawyers have said it is illegal to detain people in Panama for more than 24 hours without a court order.

Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, confirmed that 97 people had been transferred to the camp. “They are not detainees,’’ he said. “It’s a migrant camp where they will be taken care off — not a detention camp.”

Mr. Ruiz-Hernández said the camp was the best option available to the government for housing migrants and noted that the migrants had food, water and access to medical and psychological care. He said there were no cages.

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The transfer is the latest move in a weeklong saga for a group of about 300 migrants who arrived in the United States hoping to to seek asylum. The group was sent to Panama, which has agreed to aid President Trump in his plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants.

The agreement is part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to export some of its most difficult migration challenges to other nations. The United States, for varying reasons, cannot easily deport people to countries like Afghanistan, Iran and China, but by applying intense pressure it has managed to convince Panama to take some of them.

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After being sent to Panama, the deported migrants are no longer subject to United States law.

Costa Rica is also taking some deportees, including migrants originally from Central Asia and India, and has said it plans to repatriate them. A flight from the United States was expected to arrive in Costa Rica on Thursday.

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On Tuesday, Mr. Ábrego told reporters at a news conference that 170 of the 300 or so migrants had volunteered to be sent back to their countries of origin, journeys that would be arranged by the International Organization for Migration. He described the decision to hold the migrants as part of an accord with the United States.

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