In a shelter in the jungle province of Darién, guarded by Panamanian officers, around a hundred Asian migrants wait to be found a country to go to, after being deported from the United States by Donald Trump’s government. Green fields where cattle graze surround the San Vicente refuge, located about 220 km southeast of the capital, where the migrants arrived Wednesday after spending a few days confined in a Panama City hotel.
This center with white walls and blue trim is about 300 meters from the Pan-American Highway, eight km from Metetí, a town of 10,000 inhabitants in Darién province, bordering Colombia. Just over two years ago, it was built to temporarily house migrants entering Panama after crossing the inhospitable Darién jungle on their way through Central America and Mexico to the United States.
Since this week, however, its guests are about a hundred Asians who refuse to be repatriated and for whom the International Organization for Migration (IOM) must find a safe country to send them to. Of the 299 deportees who arrived on three flights last week to Panama, those who have accepted repatriation remain in the Decapolis hotel in the Panamanian capital while paperwork is completed.
“Those who come from the south [towards the United States] come with hope, but those who come from the north [deported from the United States] have already lost it,” said a Panamanian officer in Darién. The heat and humidity are stifling in this jungle, which in 2023 was crossed on foot by more than half a million people and by about 300,000 last year according to official figures, in search of a better life in the United States.
Three meals a day
The migrants cannot leave the facility, which is guarded by Migration officers and border police (Senafront). Access is restricted and leafy trees prevent it from being seen from the road. Only locals occasionally circulate around the area, some on horseback.
An officer explained that taking photos or recording videos of the facility from the outside is prohibited without authorization from the Ministry of Security. In the shelter, which has several pavilions, including modular ones that serve as a health center, migrants receive food three times a day, according to a Panamanian officer. “Their food is better than what our officials receive,” he stated.
Dismary Manco, a 22-year-old university student, says that some of San Vicente’s neighbors previously feared that migrants traveling to the United States could spread diseases to them. “But they [now] also have their shelter and we are here [outside], so I don’t think they can infect us or anything like that from there to here,” this social work students says.
Bridge countries
Like Costa Rica and Guatemala, Panama agreed to serve as a bridge for migrants deported by the US after a recent visit by the new US diplomatic chief, Marco Rubio. On Thursday, 135 migrants arrived in Costa Rica, the vast majority Asians, including 65 children and two pregnant women. They were taken to Catem, a shelter about 370 km from San José, on the border with Panama, to continue the repatriation process.
There at Catem there are also some Venezuelans who are voluntarily returning by land, deterred by Trump’s anti-immigration policies. In Panama, about 30 km from the San Vicente refuge, at the Lajas Blancas shelter, there are about 370 migrants who crossed from Colombia heading to the United States, mostly Venezuelans.
Due to the rugged geography, it has never been possible to build a 130-kilometer stretch of road between Panama and Colombia in this area known as El Tapón del Darién, a natural border 266 km long and 575,000 hectares in area.
