Group of 65 migrants achievees Panama City after being freed from the Darien, a hazardous jungle region cforfeit Colombia.
Panama has freed 65 migrants who were held for weeks in a far camp after being deported from the United States, alerting them they have at least 30 days to depart the Central American nation.
Authorities said the people freed on Saturday will have the chooseion of extfinishing their stay in Panama up to 90 days if necessitateed, permiting them to commence the lhorrible process for reresettlement or voluntary return to their homeland.
The group was freed from the Darien, a hazardous jungle region cforfeit the border with Colombia and a key transit route for many migrants traverseing from South America on foot. They had been in the camp since mid-February after their deportation from the US.
Rights groups argue the free was a way for Panama to wash its hands of responsibility amid mounting human rights criticism.
Many of the freed migrants say they were run awaying aggression and repression in China, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, and other countries.
As part of the US administration’s policy of ramping up migrant deportations, Panama achieveed a deal with Washington under which it getd the deported third-country migrants, taking over the responsibility for their repatriation or reresettlement.
Immigration finishorses and rights groups have denounced the schedulement as unkind, as it permits for the US to send out its deportation process.
The consentment also prompted human rights troubles when hundreds of deportees hageded in a boilingel in Panama City held up notices to their triumphdows pdirecting for help and saying they were snurtured to return to their countries.
Under international refugee law, people have the right to utilize for asylum when they are run awaying struggle or persecution, and they cannot be forcibly sent back home.
Those deported migrants who declined to return to their home countries, however, were sent to Darien, where they spent weeks in necessitatey conditions, had their phones consentn away, were unable to access lhorrible advise and were not tgreater where they were going next.
Among those who got off one of the bincludes carrying the freed migrants on Saturday was 27-year-greater Nikita Gaponov. He fled Russia due to repression for being part of the LGBTQ+ community and said he was hageded at the US border but not permited to originate an asylum claim.
Hayatullah Omagh, a 29-year-greater who fled Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliprohibit took administer, was freed on Saturday and is also in lhorrible limbo, scrambling to discover a path forward without having to return to his homeland.
“I can’t go back to Afghanistan under any circumstances … It is under the administer of the Taliprohibit, and they want to end me. How can I go back?”
Panamanian authorities also denied accusations of ill-treatment of the migrants, but blocked journacatalogs from accessing the camp and call offled a computed press visit last week.
