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 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 on 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.
Mr. 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,” Mr. 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,” he said.
The flight could herald a new front in Mr. Trump’s efforts to conduct a mass removal of unauthorized immigrants, 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.
The Panamanian government announced a proposal this week to send some newly arrived migrants to a small town at the end of the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle in southern Panama, and then repatriate them “by air or sea to their countries of origin.”
Responding to reporters’ questions on Thursday, Mr. 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. Mr. Mulino did not give a timeline for when the other flights were scheduled to arrive.
In a statement on Thursday, the International Organization for Migration said it was providing support to the recently arrived migrants at the request of Panamanian authorities. It noted that it was working with local officials to assist the migrants, including “supporting returns to their home countries or safe alternatives.”
Migration at the southern U.S. border has shifted in recent years to include not just people coming from Mexico and Central America but also those from a wider range of countries, including ones that either do not accept deportation flights or take them sparingly.
The Trump administration has already received promises from El Salvador and Guatemala to accept migrants of other nationalities. Administration officials have indicated they are discussing similar deals with other countries.
But critics have noted that the United States could be sending migrants into more dangerous conditions. El Salvador, for example, has been accused of widespread human rights violations in its detentions, and Guatemala has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.
After meeting with Mr. Rubio this month, Mr. Mulino had also indicated a willingness to receive deportees from other countries. (Panama does not send large numbers of migrants to the United States, as Mr. Mulino noted.)
“We are completely certain that reverse immigrants will come at some point — that is, they will be sent back either along the same route or because the United States will bring them back to deport them from here,” Mr. Mulino said.
The government in Panama has been under greater pressure than other Latin American countries to show it is on board with Mr. Trump’s priorities for the region, including curbing China’s influence and controlling illegal migration. Mr. Trump has focused on what he sees as China’s role in the Panama Canal and threatened that the United States would retake control of it.
Mr. Mulino, who has sought to align himself with Mr. Trump on migration, made assurances that he would address the role of China in Panama after his meeting with Mr. Rubio. He also emphasized a 94 percent reduction over the past year in migration at the Darién Gap, where hundreds of thousands of migrants had been entering the country from Colombia on their way north to the U.S. border.
Federico Rios contributed reporting.
