Dozens of stranded migrants sleep on mattresses in a school gymnasium. In interviews, 25 deportees from around the world said they were stuck in limbo.
Dozens of stranded migrants sleep on mattresses in a school gymnasium. In interviews, 25 deportees from around the world said they were stuck in limbo.
Genevieve GlatskyFarnaz Fassihi and Julie Turkewitz
Genevieve Glatsky reported from Panama City, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia.
When the first buses of newly freed migrants arrived this month in Panama City from a detention camp at the edge of a jungle, three people were visibly ill. One needed H.I.V. treatment, a lawyer said, another had run out of insulin and a third was suffering from seizures.
Confusion, chaos and fear reigned. “What am I going to do?” one migrant wondered aloud. “Where am I going to go?”
These are questions being asked by dozens of migrants deported to Panama last month by the Trump administration, part of the president’s sweeping efforts to expel millions of people from the United States.
At first, Panamanian officials had locked the group of about 300 people in a hotel. Then, those who did not accept repatriation to their home countries were sent to a guarded camp at the edge of a jungle. Finally, after a lawsuit and an outcry from human rights groups, the Panamanian authorities released the deportees, busing them back to Panama City.
Now, the remaining migrants — from Iran, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere — are free but stranded in a country that doesn’t want them, many sleeping in a school gymnasium made available by an aid group, with no real sense of what to do next.
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