US deports migrants from Asia to Panama

The Trump administration deported migrants from several Asian nations to Panama on Wednesday night, Panamanian and U.S. officials said, in a move that could signal much faster removals of immigrants who have remained in the United States because their countries have made it difficult to return them.

The flight carrying the migrants, a military plane that took off from California, appears to be the first of its kind during the Trump administration. It came on the heels of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit last week to Panama, which has been under tremendous pressure from President Donald Trump over how it runs the Panama Canal.

The more than 100 migrants on the flight, including families, had entered the United States illegally from countries such as Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. It is often difficult for the United States to return migrants to those nations.

President José Raúl Mulino of Panama, speaking at a news conference Thursday morning, said 119 people of “the most diverse nationalities in the world” had arrived the night before on a U.S. Air Force flight at an airport outside Panama City.

Mulino said they were being housed in a local hotel and would be moved to a shelter in Darién, a province in Panama’s east, a process managed by the International Organization for Migration. From there, he said, they would be repatriated.

“We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible on flights from the United States,” Mulino said, adding that migrants would be transferred to their countries of origin on flights funded by the United States. “This is another contribution Panama is making on the migration issue.”

The flight could herald a new front in Trump’s efforts to conduct a mass removal of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and it shows the willingness of at least some Latin American countries, under intense diplomatic pressure, to assist him. But it also raises questions about what will happen to migrants as they are shunted to another country where they may be unfamiliar with the language or culture.

Responding to reporters’ questions Thursday, Mulino said two more U.S. Air Force flights were expected to bring a total of about 360 deported migrants to Panama. He said he expected they would quickly be flown to their countries of origin from Darién in an effort that would be paid for entirely by the United States. Mulino did not give a timeline for when the other flights were scheduled to arrive.

In a statement Thursday, the International Organization for Migration said it was providing support to the recently arrived migrants at the request of Panamanian authorities.

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