Trump deportees unable to return home left in limbo in Panama

If Salana is sent back to Afghanistan, she will be stoned to death. Of that, she is certain.

Yet over the past six months, she has been asked – again and again – whether she will board a repatriation flight.

“I cry and I cry. I tell them I cannot go back – that I will be killed,” she says. “Every time I sleep, I have nightmares of it happening.”

Related: ‘They tricked us’: migrants who braved the Darién Gap forced home by Trump deal

Salana was one of 299 immigrants to be marched on to military planes and deported from the United States to Panama in February. All non-Panamanians, they were some of the first to be expelled by Donald Trump under a third-country deportation agreement, a move that triggered international backlash.

Most have since left Panama – some even attempting to return to the US – but many remain, from countries including Iran, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. With the majority of their asylum applications rejected, they say they are trapped in limbo.

“We are stuck. This is no life. We cannot move forwards,” said Sharity, a Nigerian deportee who fled political violence.

Trump’s decision marked a devastating setback for Salana, who, since the Taliban stormed Kabul, has been trying to find a safe country to settle in.

“A distant relative was promoted high up in the Taliban and insisted on my hand in marriage,” says Salana, who asked to use a pseudonym for her safety. “He was 57 and had two wives. I was 17, still a student. I was so scared.”

With her family’s support, Salana fled – at first moving city to city, before crossing into Iran on a one-year visa. From there, she applied for asylum in Germany and Switzerland, but says her requests went unanswered. She was accepted on to a university course in northern Cyprus, but was denied entry by airport officials. Then she was raped while attempting to cross into Turkey – and deported back to Iran. “I had nowhere to go,” she says. “I was alone.”

Eventually, Salana acquired a six-month visa for Brazil. When it expired, she joined the long trail of migrants travelling north through Latin America, with plans to reach Canada. But by the time she arrived in the US, Trump had taken office. “They put me in detention, it was like a jail. They took my phone, and we didn’t even have the right to take a shower,” she says. “I was shocked, but I kept thinking, at least now I am in a safe country.”

Then, weeks later, Salana was put onboard a military plane. It was only when the doors opened, and she saw the badge on the breast of a Panamanian police officer, that she realised she had been deported.

“They kept asking if I wanted to go back to Afghanistan. I cried and said I really miss my country, my family, my life before, but I can never go back,” she says. Folding into herself, she speaks of a friend who three months ago killed herself after being forced into marriage with an older man, and of another who calls her every day in tears. “Our women have lost everything,” Salana adds.

Queen, 25, also found herself on one of the deportation flights to Panama. Her journey began in December, after an attack in Nigeria left her father dead and her home burned down.

She had worked as the secretary of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a proscribed separatist group. In early 2024, Queen says she was abducted by a militia and held captive for two weeks. “They tortured me, raped me, flogged me, and told me never to work with IPOB again,” she says.

Queen says she immediately stopped her work, but that in December “they came back”. “They were looking for me and attacked my father. They killed him and burned down our house,” she says. “My husband and mother told me to run, and I did.”

Queen also travelled to Brazil and up to the US. But like Salana, she was detained on entry and soon afterwards deported.

“It never crossed my mind that the US would treat us like that,” she says. Many of those deported say they were never given an opportunity to formally request asylum in the US, according to human rights groups.

Related: US deportees in ‘black box’ in Panama with no access to counsel, lawyers say

On arrival in Panama, the deportees were first held in a hotel under police guard, unable to contact the outside world. One woman wrote “HELP US” in lipstick on her window. It was here, the migrants say, that they were told “go back to your country or stay detained here”. Those who refused were transferred to a camp in the Darién Gap, a hostile jungle home to venomous creatures and merciless heat, where they say they were held for weeks without access to lawyers or phones. After a lawsuit and outcry from human rights groups, the deportees were bussed back to the capital – and abandoned.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), by 18 March, 179 of the original 299 expellees had returned to their home countries under a scheme called “assisted voluntary return”. Human Rights Watch said the “circumstances of their confinement and the ‘choices’ they were presented called into question the voluntariness of those returns”. The IOM has said it does not carry out forced returns or pressure people into leaving.

Silvia Serna, a regional litigator at the Global Strategic Litigation Council, who was part of the team that filed a lawsuit over the migrants’ detention, says the government has “acted as if it didn’t create the situation”.

“They counted on people opting for repatriation, or thought they could pressure them enough to repatriate,” she says. “As time passes, it’s become more clear that they never had a plan, and that they don’t particularly care that there isn’t a plan.”

Jorge Luis Ayala, the director of Hogar Luisa, a charity housing some of the deportees, says that his charity has not received any support from the government to care for them. “The government has completely ignored us,” he says.

The deportees’ right to stay in Panama has also been fraught with uncertainty. They were initially granted 30-day permits, with their stays extended various times at the last minute. They are now allowed to remain until December, but are not permitted to work. “They’re stuck in this limbo – what the government wants is for them to get tired and leave,” Ayala says.

Accepting the flights – following political and economic pressure from Trump – has proved a point of contention for President José Raúl Mulino, who campaigned last year on promises to reduce immigration. “Whether there will be more planes from the United States or not, I honestly don’t know,” Mulino said in March. “I’m not very inclined to do it, because they leave us with the problem.” The Panamanian government did not respond to requests for comment, but has previously claimed that it has not mistreated the migrants.

At the two-storey Hogar Luisa house, a handful of the deportees sit day and night waiting for news. “We don’t have anywhere to go. We don’t speak Spanish. We don’t have money,” says Sharity, 36. “It has been terrible.”

Salana is a rare exception: she was eventually granted asylum in Panama – but still has no work permit. “It’s been six months since I arrived. They accepted my asylum case so now I have a Panama ID, but I am not allowed to work. I don’t know Spanish and have no teacher to learn it, and no money. I have no friends. I have no right to do anything,” she says.

Salana says she feels the deportees have “been forgotten by the world”.

“It’s been three years since I fled, and again I find myself trapped. I really try to stay strong, but I have little left.”