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Posts tagged Panama
“Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened”: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama

By Bill Frelick, Martina Rapido Ragozzino, and Michael Garcia Bochenek

Between February 12 and 15, 2025, the US government expelled 299 third-country nationals to Panama after they crossed the US-Mexico border, most of whom were seeking asylum, following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025. Many of these people had fled persecution due to ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, family ties, and political views. “Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened”: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama documents this abusive mass expulsion, exposing the harsh detention conditions and mistreatment in the United States, beyond being denied due process and the right to seek asylum there. It also details their incommunicado detention in Panama, where authorities confiscated their phones, blocked visitors, and isolated them from the outside world. Of the 299 expelled, 179 were later returned to their home countries under the International Organization for Migration’s “assisted voluntary return” program—though the conditions of their confinement and the limited options they were given raise serious doubts about the voluntariness of those returns. The United States should allow those wrongfully removed to return and seek asylum in accordance with its international legal obligations. It should stop violating the principle of nonrefoulement by processing asylum claims of those arriving at the US border, rather than outsourcing responsibility to countries with far less capacity to examine asylum claims or to provide protection to those needing it. Panama should ensure that those it agreed to take can fairly access asylum and avoid complicity in US abuses

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2025. 45p.

Halfway to the U.S: A Report from Honduras on Migration

By Adam Isacson, Ana Lucia Verduzco, and Maureen Meyer

Over 10 days in late April and early May 2023, a team of researchers from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) visited Honduras to examine the challenges of migration at a historic moment of human mobility in the Americas. We wanted to understand international migration through Honduras, which grew quickly from a trickle to a torrent after migration through Panama’s treacherous Darién Gap region began on a large scale in 2021. WOLA and other groups have examined the migration phenomenon in the U.S.-Mexico and Mexico-Guatemala border regions, and other organizations have looked at the DariÈn Gap. The situation of migrants crossing Honduras, however, has received very little attention….

Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), 2023. 29p.

Extortion in Central America: Gender, Micro-Trafficking, and Panama

By Guillermo Vázquez del Mercado, Luis Félix, and Gerardo Carballo

Gangs and criminal organizations in Central America continue to seek means of adapting to COVID-19 while communities look to build resilience to its effects. The aim of this report is to contribute to the understanding of extortion in an evolving context as pandemic-related mobility restrictions are enforced and lifted in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.

The report identifies the evolving role of women in gang schemes and dynamics; explores criminal structures in Panama and their relationship with extortion; and highlights trends among extortion practices as they shift to other criminal activities such as large-scale and local trafficking of cannabis and cocaine.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 19p.