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Panama Pressured into Being Part of Trump's Deportation Machinery [1]
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Date: 2025-02-19
Trump campaigned on a vow to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history,” using dehumanizing language that chillingly echoed Nazi rhetoric to claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country.
It’s still unclear whether Trump will or even can fully implement his promise of mass deportations. The economic costs and logistical hurdles may simply be too great. But as the New York Times reports, the Trump administration has found a solution to at least one of its logistical challenges—what to do with migrants from countries that will not take them back, including Afghanistan, Iran, and China. True to form, it involves Trump extorting other countries into taking them in. In this case, the country is Panama. As the New York Times reports,
On Wednesday, U.S. officials began flying hundreds of people, including people from Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries, to Panama, which is under intense pressure to appease Mr. Trump, who has threatened to take over the Panama Canal.
Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, describes this as part of “a totally new era of enforcement” in which the US coerces other nations into becoming part of its “deportation machinery.”
In effect, this strategy not only allows Trump to outsource the dirty work of enforcement but also enables him to wash his hands of the cruelty:
Because the deported migrants are no longer on U.S. soil, Washington is not legally obligated to make sure they are treated humanely or have the chance to seek asylum.
Of course officials in Panama insist that they and the United States are adhering to international protocols in their treatment of the 350 deportees who were flown in by military plane. However, although it is illegal to detain people without a court order for more than 24 hours, the deportees have already been locked inside a hotel in Panama City for nearly a week. Several of them are children.
They have been stripped of their passports and most have had their cell phones taken away. Armed guards prevent them from leaving. Journalists are banned from entering. However, the New York Times managed to interview some people who had concealed phones.
The details are heart-rending. One detainee has tried to commit suicide. Another broke his leg trying to escape. Locked inside the hotel, barred from speaking with lawyers, they press against the windows of the building in a desperate attempt to get help from those outside. One migrant from Iran scrawled “Help us” in lipstick on the glass pane. Another clawed at the window in a futile effort to escape.
When she noticed journalists below, she held up a piece of paper that read “Afghan.” She made hand motions that indicated an airplane, then her head falling off. The message seemed to be clear: A flight home meant death.
One man the reporters managed to reach by phone told them that he had come to the US from China in pursuit of freedom. “I thought: America is a free country with respect for human rights,” he said. “I had no idea it was like a dictatorship.”
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