Panama City – After weeks of human rights demands and criticisms, Dr.
He pushed many as Hayatullah Omagh, a 29 -year -old who fled from Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban took control, in a legal limbo, struggling to find a way forward.
“We are refugees. We have no money. We cannot pay for a hotel in Panama City, we have no relatives, ”Omagh told Associated Press in an interview. “I can’t return to Afghanistan under any circumstance. … is under the control of the Taliban, and they want to kill me. How can I go back? “
The authorities have said that the deportees will have the option to extend their stay in 60 days if they need it, but after that, many as Omagh do not know what they will do.
Omagh left a bus in Panama City along with 65 migrants from China, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and other nations after spending weeks in bad conditions by poor conditions by the Panamanian government, which has said he wants to work with the Trump administration “to send a sign of deterrence” to people who hope to migrate.
Human rights groups and lawyers advocated by migrants waited at the bus terminal, and hurried to find the refuge of liberated migrants and other resources. Dozens of other people remained in the camp.
Among those who left the buses were the migrants who fled violence and repression in Pakistan and Iran, and Nikita Gaponov, 27, fled from Russia due to the repression of being part of the LGBTQ+ community and that he said he was arrested at the US border, but he was not allowed to claim an asylum.
“Once I get out of the bus, I will be sleeping on the floor tonight,” Gaponov said.
Others turned their eyes to the north once again, saying that although they had already been deported, they had no choice but to continue after crossing the world to reach the United States.
The deportees, in much of the Asian countries, were part of an agreement trapped between the Trump and Panama and Costa Rica administration while the United States government tries to accelerate deportations. The administration sent hundreds of people, many families with children, the two Central American countries as a stop, while the authorities organize a way to send them back to their countries of origin.
Critics described it as a way for the United States to export its deportation process.
The agreement fed the concerns of human rights when hundreds of deportees arrested in a hotel in Panama city held notes to their windows asking for help and saying that they were afraid of returning to their own countries.
According to the International Refugee Law, people have the right to request asylum when they flee from conflict or persecution.
Those who refused to return home were later sent to a remote camp near the Panama border with Colombia, where weeks spent in poor condition, they were stripped of their phones, unable to access the legal council and were not told where they went below.
Lawyers and human rights defenders warned that Panama and Costa Rica were becoming “black holes” for deportees, and said their release was a way for the Panaman authorities to wash the hands of those deported in the midst of criticized criticized by human rights.
When being released on Saturday night, human rights lawyers identified at least three people who required medical care. One has been vomiting for more than a week, another sportsman had diabetes and had not had access to insulin in the camp and another person had HIV and did not have access to medicine in detention.
Those who were released, like Omagh, said they could not return home.
As Atheist and member of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan known as Hazara, he said that returning home under the government of the Taliban, who returned to power after the Biden administration retired from the country, would mean that they would kill him. It only went to the USA. After trying for years to live in Pakistan, Iran and other countries, but to be denied visas.
Omagh was deported after introducing himself to the US authorities and asking to seek asylum in the US., What was denied.
“My hope was freedom. Only freedom, ”he said. “They didn’t give me the opportunity. I asked many times to talk to an asylum officer and they told me ‘no, no, no, no, no’ “.
Even so, he said that leaving the camp was a relief. Omagh and other migrants who talked to the little detailed food of AP, suffocating heat with little relief and aggressive Panaman authorities.
In one case, Omagh and others said that a Chinese man made a hunger strike of a week. In another, a small riot broke out because the guards refused to give a migrant their phone. The riot, they said, was suppressed by the armed guards.
Panaman authorities denied accusations about camp conditions, but blocked journalists to access the camp and canceled a planned press visit last week.
While international aid organizations said they would organize trips to a third country for people who did not want to return home, the Panaman authorities said that the liberated people had already rejected help.
Omagh said they told him in the camp that he could be sent to a third country if he gives people of Afghanistan visas. He said it would be incredibly difficult because few nations open their doors to people with an Afghan passport.
He said he asked the authorities in the camp several times if he could look for asylum in Panama, and said they told him that “we did not accept asylum.”
“None of them wants to stay in Panama. They want to go to the United States, ”said Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Panama, in an interview with the AP last month.
That was the case of some, like a Chinese woman who spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity, for fear of the repercussions of the Panaman authorities.
When leaving the bus, the first thing I wanted to do was find a Coca-Cola. So, she would find a way back to the United States
“I still want to go to the United States and fulfill my American dream,” he said.
