PANAMA CITY — About one-third of the deportees from various countries that Panama had received from the United States were transferred to a camp in its Darien province on Wednesday, an area that has become the main thoroughfare for migrants traveling from South America to the US border in recent years, security officials said late Wednesday.
The migrants sent to Darien refused to be repatriated to their home countries and will be held there until third countries can be found to accept them, according to a Panamanian official familiar with the situation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. They were part of a bigger group of 299 migrants sent to Panama by the US authorities as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to speed up deportations. Later Wednesday, Panama’s Security Ministry announced that 97 migrants had been sent to the camp in Darien province, with eight more scheduled to arrive in the coming hours. It stated that 13 migrants had already been willingly returned to their home nations.

The others remained under police guard in a Panama City hotel, awaiting travel arrangements to their respective nations. The Panamanian administration has denied that they are detained, but they are under police guard and are not permitted to leave the hotel.
Panama’s National Immigration Service claimed early Wednesday that one migrant, a Chinese woman, had fled the hotel, but she was eventually apprehended. Security Minister Frank Abrego stated on social media site X that she was discovered abandoned near a migrant processing center on the northern Panama-Costa Rica border, a popular transit hub for migrants heading to the United States. While it was unclear if she was recovered in Panama or Costa Rica, he attributed her brief escape to “human traffickers.” The deportees, largely from Asian countries, remain in limbo in Panama after the Central American country agreed to serve as a transit hub for migrants who the Trump administration finds difficult to deport directly to their home countries of origin, although he did not provide a specific timeline. He also noted that an Irish citizen had already been repatriated.
The remaining migrants would be transferred to a temporary migration facility near the Darien Gap, a highly forested region along Colombia’s border, until it was determined where they would be placed. Historically, migrants from Venezuela and other nations used this region to trek north to the United States.