US deports migrants from Pakistan to Panama

NYT says move signals much faster removal of immigrants

NEW YORK:

The Trump administration has deported migrants from several Asian nations, including Pakistan, to Panama, a Latin American country, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing Panamanian and US officials.

The report said the move could signal much faster removals of immigrants who have remained in the United States because their countries have made it difficult to return them.

It said that the flight carrying the migrants on a military plane took off from California. It came on the heels of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit last week to Panama, which has been under tremendous pressure from President Donald Trump over how it runs the Panama Canal.

The more than 100 migrants on the flight, including families, had entered the United States illegally from countries such as Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, with the Times saying, "It is often difficult for the United States to return migrants to those nations".

Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino, speaking at a news conference on Thursday morning, said 119 people of "the most diverse nationalities in the world" had arrived Wednesday night on a US Air Force flight at an airport outside Panama City, according to the report. Mulino said they were being housed in a local hotel and would be moved to a shelter in Darien, a province in Panama's east, a process managed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency. From there, he said, they would be repatriated.

"We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible on flights from the United States," Mulino said, adding, "This is another contribution Panama is making on the migration issue."

The flight could herald a new front in Trump's efforts to conduct a mass removal of unauthorized immigrants, and it shows the willingness of at least some Latin American countries, under intense diplomatic pressure, to assist him, the Times said. But it also raises questions about what will happen to migrants as they are shunted to another country where they may be unfamiliar with the language or culture.

The Panamanian government announced a proposal this week to send some newly arrived migrants to a small town at the end of the Darien Gap, a dangerous jungle in southern Panama, and then repatriate them "by air or sea to their countries of origin."

Responding to reporters' questions on Thursday, Mulino said two more U.S. Air Force flights were expected to bring a total of about 360 deported migrants to Panama. He said he expected they would quickly be flown to their countries of origin from Darien in an effort that would be paid for entirely by the United States.

Mulino did not give a timeline for when the other flights were scheduled to arrive. Migration at the southern US border has shifted in recent years to include not just people coming from Mexico and Central America but also those from a wider range of countries, including ones that either do not accept deportation flights or take them sparingly, it was pointed out.

The Trump administration has already received promises from El Salvador and Guatemala to accept migrants of other nationalities. Administration officials have indicated they are discussing similar deals with other countries.

But critics have noted that the United States could be sending migrants into more dangerous conditions.