Deportees from the US hop embassy-to-embassy in Panama in a desperate scramble to seek asylum
The focus of international humanitarian concern just weeks before, the deportees now say they're increasingly worried that with little legal and humanitarian assistance and no clear pathway forward offered by authorities, they may be forgotten.
'After this, we don't know what we'll do,' said 29-year-old Hayatullah Omagh, who fled Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban takeover.
In February, the United States deported nearly 300 people from mostly Asian nations to Panama. The Central American ally was supposed to be a stopover for migrants from countries that were more challenging for the U.S. to deport to as the Trump administration tried to accelerate deportations. Some agreed to voluntarily return to their countries from Panama, but others refused out of fear of persecution and were sent to a remote camp in the Darien jungle for weeks.
Earlier this month, Panama released those remaining migrants from the camp, giving them one month to leave Panama. The government said they had declined assistance from international organizations, instead choosing to make their own arrangements. But with limited money, no familiarity with Panama and little to no Spanish, the migrants have struggled.
On Tuesday, about a dozen migrants began visiting foreign missions in Panama's capital, including the Canadian and British embassies, and the Swiss and Australian consulates with the hope of starting the process to seek refuge in those countries. They were either turned away or told that they would need to call or reach out to embassies by email. Messages were met with no response or a generic response saying embassies couldn't help.
In one email, Omagh detailed why he had to flee his country, writing 'please don't let me be sent back to Afghanistan, a place where there is no way for me to survive.'
'The Embassy of Canada in Panama does not offer visa or immigration services, not either services for refugee. Nor are we allowed to answer any questions in regards to visa or immigration,' the response read.
At the British Embassy, a security guard handed asylum-seekers a pamphlet reading 'Emergency Help for British People.' The Swiss consulate told the group they would have to reach out to the embassy in Costa Rica, and handed the migrants a piece of paper with general phone lines and emails printed from the embassy's website.
Canadian, British and Australian diplomats in Panama did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. The Swiss consulate denied that they turned away the asylum-seekers.
The migrants had travelled halfway across the globe, reached the U.S. border where they sought asylum and instead found themselves in Panama, a country some had traversed months earlier on their way to the U.S.
Many of the deportees said they would be open to seeking asylum in Panama, but had been told both by international aid groups and Panamanian authorities that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to be granted refuge in the Central American nation.
Álvaro Botero, among those advocating for the migrants at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said he wasn't surprised that they were turned away from embassies, as such help is often only offered in extreme cases of political persecution, and that other governments may fear tensions with the Trump administration.
'It's crucial that these people are not forgotten,' Botero said. 'They never asked to be sent to Panama, and now they're in Panama with no idea what to do, without knowing what their future will be and unable to return to their countries.'
The Trump administration has simultaneously closed legal pathways to the U.S. at its southern border , ramped up its deportation program, suspended its refugee resettlement program , as well as funding for organizations that could potentially aid the migrants now stuck in Panama.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration sent more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be held in a maximum-security gang prison, alleging that those expelled were part the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang without providing evidence.
On Thursday, the migrants visited the Panama offices of the U.N. refugee agency. Omagh said they were told that the agency could not help them seek asylum in other countries due to restrictions by the Panamanian government. A U.N. official told them they could help start the asylum process in Panama, but warned that it was very unlikely that Panama's government would accept their claim, Omagh said.
The U.N.'s International Organization for Migration and the refugee agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the AP.
The same day, Filippo Grandi, head of the U.N. refugee agency, warned that aid cuts by the U.S. government would hurt refugee services around the world.
'We appeal to member States to honor their commitments to displaced people. Now is the time for solidarity, not retreat,' Grandi said in a statement.
Deportees including Omagh worried that foreign governments and aid organizations were washing their hands of them.
Omagh said that as an atheist and member of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan known as the Hazara, returning home under the rule of the Taliban would mean death. He only went to the U.S. after trying for years to live in Pakistan, Iran and other countries but being denied visas.
Russian Aleksandr Surgin, also among the group seeking help at the embassies, said he left his country because he openly opposed the war in Ukraine on social media, and was told by government officials he could either be jailed or fight with Russian troops in Ukraine.
When asked Thursday what he would do next, he responded simply: 'I don't hope for anything anymore.'
___
Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
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Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 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Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. 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'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Chicago Tribune
15 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area children get deportation letters: Leave or ‘the federal government will find you'
Thirteen-year-old Xally Morales stared blankly at a letter she received from the Department of Homeland Security last month. She could not read the dozens of lines in English addressed to her. She arrived in the country from Mexico a little over seven months ago, crossing the southern border in search of safety. Xally knows very little English. 'They say I have to leave the country immediately,' the young teen whispered in Spanish, barely meeting anyone's eyes at a Chicago law firm on a recent Friday afternoon. No explanation. No hearing. And no time. The night she received the letter, she said, the family went into hiding after her older sister translated the letter for her. 'Trump wants me to go back to Mexico. But how can I do that alone?' Xally told the Tribune. 'I'm scared ICE will come for me.' Xally is one of at least 12 children in the Waukegan area — all unaccompanied minors from Mexico — who received sudden deportation letters from DHS last month, according to advocates. All of the girls legally entered the country within the past year under humanitarian parole as unaccompanied minors and were later reunited with undocumented parents or other family already living in the U.S. But despite that reunification, the girls are unable to be legally represented by their parents in immigration court due to the way they entered the country. Immigration advocates warn that these cases are becoming more common, with a growing number of children now receiving letters from DHS ending their humanitarian parole. They say this could signal a troubling shift under the Trump administration: a move to strip asylum protections from children, even those with pending claims, and accelerate the deportation of minors without due process. 'Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the Federal Government will find you,' the June 20 letter reads. Unless their families can find and afford scarce legal representation, the children could be at risk of getting detained or could be forced to face a judge alone, advocates and attorneys said. But an assistant secretary of DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to the Tribune said that 'accusations that ICE is 'targeting' children are FALSE and an attempt to demonize law enforcement.' McLaughlin added that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'does not 'target' children nor does it deport children.' The agency also does not separate families, she said in the statement. Instead, 'ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone safe whom the parent designates.' But questions regarding why letters are being sent to unaccompanied minors, like Xally, and what the protocol is to deport them, as stated in the letter, were left unanswered. Sitting next to her mother in the law office that afternoon, she held her hand tight. 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When he learned that Xally and other children were taking sanctuary at a Waukegan church after getting the letters, he offered to meet with them, attempting to ease their anxiety and fear. 'The reality is that under this administration, no one is safe anywhere. They (immigration authorities) are unpredictable and desperate to meet a quota even if it means detaining a child,' Antia said. 'This administration doesn't care whether you are in the hospital, whether you are in the courthouse, whether you are in your home, definitely not at church.' While Xally and her mother didn't leave the law office with clear answers about their future, they said they felt a small sense of hope. The attorneys said they would explore legal options to help Xally stay in the country, or at the very least, protect her from detention. They returned to the church, packed their bags and went home. The fear, however, lingers more than ever. Every morning, Xally wakes up wondering if agents will show up at her door the way they have been showing up to other homes in Waukegan and other cities near Chicago. The girl and her mother avoid going out altogether, spending most days watching TV, doing her nails, writing or reading. 'When I begin to feel anxious, I pray,' Xally said as she scrolled though a photo of her late father on her cellphone background. Her nails are painted in bright pink polish and glitter. She painted them while she was staying at the church with other children who received similar letters from DHS. She said she is used to living in fear since she lived in Mexico. Only briefly after arriving did she think her life would take a turn for the best. Xally still remembers the day she first saw Lake Michigan after arriving in the Chicago area. It was Sept. 19 of last year. Before that, she had spent nearly a month in a Texas federal facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, surrounded by other children who, like her, had crossed the southern border seeking asylum. 'More than scared, I was nervous and excited,' Xally said. She was eager to leave behind a life marked by pain and instability after her father died from COVID over five years ago. When her mother remarried, they found themselves trapped in an abusive household, her mother recalled. As the threats heightened, her mother desperately searched for a way to protect her youngest daughter. At first, she left Xally with her elderly grandmother in their impoverished Mexican hometown. But soon, Guzman realized her best option was to send Xally to the United States, where her older sisters — both U.S.-born — lived. Guzman herself had lived in the U.S. unauthorized as a teenager. It was where she met Xally's father. The couple decided to return to Mexico when Xally's grandfather was on his deathbed and they wanted to see one last time. Shortly after, Xally was born. With the help of Contreras, founder of United Giving Hope, an organization supporting immigrant families in suburban Illinois, Xally was granted humanitarian parole as an unaccompanied minor and successfully reunited with her older sisters in Waukegan. 'It was a new start for a young girl with big dreams,' Contreras said. 'She arrived at a place of safety every child deserves.' Over the past decade, Contreras has helped hundreds of children and mothers legally cross the southern border seeking asylum, assisting with paperwork and connecting them to attorneys to support their cases. But now, about a dozen of those children, including Xally, have received letters from DHS ordering them to leave the country. 'This is deeply concerning and alarming,' Contreras said. 'These children are not the criminals Trump claimed ICE would target. They are victims of human rights violations and are being terrorized. Even if ICE doesn't come for them immediately, the threat alone causes severe psychological trauma.' While Xally and her mother choose to endure the uncertainty, others cannot bear it and have opted to return to their native towns. Even when it means facing danger, Contreras said. Sixteen-year-old Daneli Mendez, who arrived in the Chicago area last October, decided to go back to her native Veracruz, Mexico. After staying at the church with Contreras for nearly a week, terrified that ICE would arrive and arrest her, Daneli told her family she would rather return voluntarily than risk detention. The girl has heard of others being detained in detention centers in poor conditions for undetermined amounts of time. Most recently, a 15-year-old Mexican boy was reportedly arrested by federal authorities and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, a notorious detention facility in Florida. On July 5, just a day after Independence Day, Contreras escorted Daneli to O'Hare International Airport and watched as the young girl boarded a flight back to the country she once fled. 'It's heartbreaking to see their dreams shattered. But this is about more than dreams, it's about their safety,' Contreras said. Daneli returned with nothing but a small backpack, a few English words she had learned, and a broken heart, leaving her family behind once again. 'She would much rather do that than be detained and deported,' Contreras said. Under U.S. immigration law, unaccompanied minors, children under 18 who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, are supposed to receive special protections. They are typically placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and granted humanitarian parole while their cases are processed. But in recent months, immigration advocates and attorneys say the system is being quietly dismantled. 'We're seeing more and more unaccompanied minors having their parole revoked and being thrown into immigration proceedings where they're completely unequipped to defend themselves,' said Davina Casa, pastor and leader of the Monarchy Organization. The group provides legal guidance and other services for immigrants in Illinois. Its main goal is to reunify families. Casas and Contreras have worked closely together to help Xally and other children arrive safely in the United States. What's more concerning, she said, is that in March, the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Only after 11 immigrant groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys, did a court order temporarily restore the funding, but the case is still ongoing. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. That same law requires safe repatriation of the children. But Casas is skeptical of that. Even if the funding has been restored, the demand can't keep up. In April, more than 8,300 children ages 11 and under were ordered deported by immigration courts. That is the highest number for that age group in any month since tracking began over 35 years ago, according to court data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as first reported by The Independent. Since Trump took office in January, judges have ordered the removal of over 53,000 immigrant children, according to the data collected. Most of those children are elementary school age or younger. Approximately 15,000 were under the age of 4, and another 20,000 were between 4 and 11 years old. Teenagers have also been affected, with 17,000 ordered deported, though that number is still below the peak seen in 2020, during Trump's first term. Some of the children are unaccompanied minors, like Xally and Daneli, but it's unclear how many, since immigration authorities stopped tracking that data years ago. In the Chicago area, it's hard to know how many children are currently being detained or deported, due to gaps in the available data. But according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Tribune, at least 16 minors were deported or left the U.S. after being booked in Chicago-area ICE detention centers during Trump's first 150 days back in office. Another seven cases are still pending. If all seven of those cases result in deportation, that would bring the total to 23 minors — about the same number as were deported in the final 150 days of the Biden administration. But the latest available ICE data doesn't capture any efforts since late June. When Xally learned that Daneli had returned home, she panicked. The two girls had spent a few nights at the church, confiding in each other the fear that few other young girls would understand. 'Would I have to do that too?' she asked herself. 'I don't want to. I like school here, I want to go back after summer break.' Xally is enrolled at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, where she would enter eighth grade if she stays in the country. Meanwhile, her summer has been shadowed by fear and uncertainty. Just days after receiving the letter, her family quietly marked her 13th birthday — no guests, no music, no gifts. She can't even go anymore to the beach, a place that once felt like the freedom and safety she and her mother had desperately sought after being released from federal custody.
Chicago Tribune
15 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Robert Schmuhl: Winston Churchill responded to political defeat by linking arms with America
Winston Churchill knew political defeat but never quite like the one he suffered nearly 80 years ago on July 26, 1945. For this notable tippler, it was more humiliating than losing his seat in Parliament to a prohibitionist opponent two decades earlier. In the United Kingdom's election of 1945, Churchill won his own campaign to remain in the House of Commons — but the Conservative Party he led received a drubbing. Labour captured 393 seats to 197 for the Conservatives. Churchill, prime minister since 1940, was immediately shown the door of 10 Downing Street. Clementine Churchill tried to console her husband of 37 years: 'It may be a blessing in disguise.' Her distraught spouse snapped: 'At the moment, it's certainly very well disguised.' Churchill's loss couldn't have come at a worst time, as far as he was concerned. The Potsdam Conference, involving the 'Big Three' of President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Churchill, was in full swing. Decisions about the postwar world, Germany's future and concluding hostilities against Japan remained unresolved. The new prime minister, Clement Attlee, replaced Churchill at the conference eight days before it ended. Between April and late July of that year, Franklin Roosevelt had died, and Churchill was removed as head of the British government. Key World War II architects were no longer making decisions, leaving Stalin senior partner of the alliance battling the Axis powers. But why, people today ask, did Churchill lose? British voters regarded Churchill an inspiring wartime commander. He rallied people during dark hours and many months of fighting alone against Adolf Hitler's Germany. But as much as they admired him under fire, the United Kingdom citizenry harbored doubts about Churchill's capability to switch gears and lead in peacetime with different social and economic demands. To them, it was time for a change. Dejected from rejection, Churchill went off on an Italian holiday to paint — and plot. The trouncing cast him in a new role, leader of the opposition, but he continued to scrutinize world affairs, as he'd done the decade before with Nazism and fascism on the rise. Less than a year after being tossed out, he visited Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, to speak truth about power. He sounded the alarm that former ally Stalin was responsible for an 'iron curtain' descending across Europe, creating Soviet satellites to Kremlin rule. From Churchill's perspective, the 'Soviet sphere' operated with pernicious intentions. 'I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war,' he argued. 'What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.' Churchill's return to global attention received mixed reviews. Some commentators labeled his speech unduly bellicose; others applauded his courage to define ominous realities. Churchill deliberately chose the U.S. rather than his homeland to plant his flag against Soviet expansionism. As prime minister, he'd made five transatlantic trips for extended meetings with Roosevelt. He understood America was the 'leader of the free world,' and he wanted to strengthen ties between his country and this one. In his 'iron curtain' speech, Churchill spoke of the need for 'a special relationship.' He even proposed common citizenship. That phrase 'special relationship' entered common parlance and still reverberates in transatlantic affairs affecting the two nations. But Churchill did more than compose and deliver memorable orations. He kept brawling in the political arena, winning back 10 Downing Street in 1951 and remaining in power until he resigned in 1955 at the age of 80. Churchill considered Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.' That convoluted, inscrutable description holds true today, as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seem to talk past each other whenever they address the war in Ukraine and other subjects. By contrast, America was an open book to Churchill and, in his opinion, 'at the pinnacle of world power.' He wanted the British empire, then showing definite signs of decline, to link arms in facing the future. With shrewd foresight, he conducted personal diplomacy to nurture the 'special relationship,' scheduling regular parleys with presidents. Between 1946 and his last White House visit in 1959, he met with Truman and Dwight Eisenhower six times in Washington and New York. On the day Churchill resigned 70 years ago this past April, he told his cabinet, 'Never be separated from the Americans.' The decade between his humiliation of 1945 and his departure as prime minister was marked by cataclysmic change and unrelenting Cold War danger. Yet as storm clouds gathered, he worked to disperse them. During those years as before, he championed freedom and democracy. 'Trust the people' was his mantra — and his bulldog determination helped him rebound from defeat to return to the world stage, this time as a seeker of peace.
