PANAMA CITY – In recent years, hundreds of thousands of migrants from around the world crossed the treacherous Darién Gap jungle, many of them stopping in temporary shelters in Panama and Costa Rica on their way to the United States.
Now, the Trump administration has deported more than 400 migrants – from as far as China and Vietnam – back to some of these shelters, leaving them in legal limbo.
U.S. officials have struggled to deport them to their countries of origin, which also include Afghanistan, Iran and Russia. Costa Rica and Panama have agreed to serve as “bridge” countries holding the migrants. At least three flights have arrived in Panama so far, and one flight landed in Costa Rica on Thursday.
The question, from many immigration lawyers and human rights advocates, is how long the migrants will stay – and under what conditions.
“This is reverse migration,” said Susana Sabalza, a lawyer representing a Vietnamese couple and a young child deported last week to Panama.
The family was detained alongside other deportees in a hotel in Panama City, where they were given limited access to a lawyer or their passports, Sabalza said. She said she was prohibited from entering the hotel. Panamanian authorities have declined to give her any information about her clients, who said they were deported from the United States before their asylum application was processed. As concerns grow over the treatment of these migrants, Panamanian officials have pushed back on allegations of mistreatment.
President José Raúl Mulino said it is “false” that the Panamanian government is mistreating the migrants. He said Panamanian authorities are trying to provide for the migrants in coordination with international organizations, which are “respectful of their human rights.”
“You have to be very perverse to think that we Panamanians are going to mistreat those poor victims of a reality that hopefully no Panamanian will find themselves in,” Mulino said.
The family had recently migrated to the United States to join other relatives after fleeing Vietnam due to political persecution, Sabalza said. What comes next for them and others like them is not yet known.
“The governments are receiving these people without a clear plan for how they will get them out of the country, or where they will take them,” said Diego Chaves-González, a senior manager for the Migration Policy Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean initiative. “Instead of a bridge, it’s a dead end.”
On Thursday evening, Costa Rica received a flight of 135 U.S. deportees – including about 65 children – from China, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Ghana and other countries, according to Costa Rica’s deputy interior minister, Omer Badilla. One of the migrants is an older adult and two of them are pregnant. None of the minors were unaccompanied, and none of the deportees have any criminal links that would be considered a security risk, Badilla said.
The migrants walked down the steps from the plane and directly onto a tourist bus.
They will be transported to a temporary shelter known as CATEM in southern Costa Rica, where they will stay for up to 30 days. Those who are able to go back to their home countries will be repatriated on flights paid for by the United States. But for those who don’t feel safe returning, there is no clear plan. Costa Rica, Badilla said, will address specific cases as they come up.
“We are helping the economically powerful brother from the north,” Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves said in a news conference Wednesday.
“And besides, love is repaid with love,” the president said.
The flight arrived in Costa Rica days after three other flights carrying nearly 300 migrants – from India, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries – landed in Panama.
Thirteen of the migrants have already voluntarily left Panama, and 97 are in a makeshift camp in the Darién Gap waiting to leave the country, Mulino said at a news conference Thursday. Of the 299 migrants, 175 remain in a Panama City hotel awaiting voluntary return, Mulino added.
Last December, Panama’s government issued a news release saying it had “no obligation to welcome deportees from other nationalities that are not Panamanian.” Panama’s agreement to accept nearly 300 migrants deported from the United States came less than two weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country to discuss the Panama Canal – an asset President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed he wants to “take back.”
Mulino interrupted a Panamanian reporter who asked what made his government change its mind and accept the deal. “It is a product of the decisions that the U.S. government is making that is pushing migrants in the U.S. south,” Mulino said. “Who gets that pressure? The countries behind the border.”
“What happens if we don’t cooperate and that disordered flow of migrants starts to overflow Panama on its way somewhere to the south?” Mulino said. “We would have a bigger problem. It’s better to handle these things in a coordinated way with international authorities who are also perfectly surveilling the situation of these people at that hotel. It is false that we are hurting them.”
On Wednesday, a Chinese woman escaped the hotel where some of the migrants are being held, Mulino said. She was found across the border in Costa Rica later that day, he added. Mulino said one of the migrants arrived injured, but he did not elaborate on the extent of the injuries.
Dozens of migrants are now being held in a camp in the dense Darién Gap jungle connecting Panama and Colombia. The camp previously served as a temporary migrant reception center where migrants could register with Panamanian authorities and seek shelter while they continued on their journey north. Last year, the center caught fire after a brawl between migrants.
The center, established in 2023, is made up of modular metal buildings, a kitchen area and bathrooms with running water. A chain-link fence bars migrants from leaving, said Caitlyn Yates, an anthropologist at the University of British Columbia who has spent years researching mobility in the Darién Gap.
Sabalza, the lawyer, said the Vietnamese family managed to use a cellphone, running low on battery, to tell their relatives Tuesday that they were on a bus headed to the camp in the Darién Gap. Sabalza is still waiting to get permission from Panamanian authorities to see them.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration will be one of the organizations helping local officials “assist those affected, supporting voluntary returns for those that request them and identifying safe alternatives for others,” according to a statement from an IOM spokesman.
IOM and other U.N. agencies assisting the migrants are already stretched thin, in part because of U.S. aid freezes, said Chaves-González of the Migration Policy Institute.
These migrants lack legal status in Panama and would not be able to easily resettle there, said Panamanian attorney Rodrigo Noriega.
“Will Panama send back a person to their country who may be punished with the death penalty?” Noriega said. “What happens if that takes place? If the person dies or they torture them. It is the Panamanian government who would then be guilty of this?”
“There are more questions than answers here,” Noriega told The Washington Post. “That’s why this is so dangerous.”
Yeison Hay, the mayor of the southern Costa Rican town of Corredores, has seen the constant flow of migrants arriving in his town on buses from Panama. For the past two years, those migrants would go to the CATEM center, taking shelter there for a day or two before continuing north toward the United States.
Now that center, with a capacity of about 300 people, will be housing the families deported by the United States.
“It’s a lesson for our people, seeing how hard it is, seeing the pain of migrating,” Hay said. “At the same time, we see that it wasn’t worth it, because they were sent back here again.”
(c) 2025, The Washington Post · Andrea Salcedo, Samantha Schmidt