Panama will release 112 migrants who had been deported from the United States last month and were being held in a remote jungle camp under conditions that lawyers and advocates said violated Panamanian and international laws.
They come from countries that the United States cannot easily return deportees to, often because those nations will not receive them.
Panama was issuing 30-day temporary humanitarian passes to the migrants, with a possible extension of up to 90 days, to give them time to arrange their return to their homelands or to other countries willing to take them, Panama’s Security Minister Frank Ábrego told reporters on Friday.
It was not clear whether the migrants would receive any kind of help once they were released.
The decision to release the migrants could represent another challenge to President Trump’s efforts to deport millions of migrants from the United States.
In mid-February, when the United States began sending planeloads of people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Panama and Costa Rica — and then those countries began locking up the deportees — it appeared that he had enlisted two pliant nations to help with his ambitious deportation plans.
The images of people locked in a hotel in Panama seemed a potentially powerful deterrent for those thinking about migrating.
But the decision by Panama to release the migrants suggests that it may be harder than the Trump administration had hoped to press other nations into aiding him in carrying out these mass expulsions.
Mr. Ábrego said that of the 299 migrants that had arrived from the United States, 177 had already returned voluntarily to their countries of origin and another 10 were waiting for flights back home.
The remaining 112, including several children, come from Afghanistan and Iran and had been held for more than two weeks in a camp about four hours from Panama’s capital. They would be released in the coming days, Panamanian officials said.
People detained in the United States who cannot be easily repatriated present a major hurdle for the Trump administration’s plan for major deportations.
So last month the administration found a workaround by exporting them to countries willing to take them in, like Panama, which is under enormous pressure to placate Mr. Trump, who has threatened to take over the Panama Canal.
The migrants were flown to Panama in mid-February, and locked for several days in a downtown hotel. Those who did not agree to be deported back to their countries, or who could not easily be sent back for logistical reasons, were bused to a remote camp in eastern Panama, at the edge of the jungle known as the Darién Gap.
The decision to release them comes as Panama’s president, Raúl Mulino, faces growing pressure from human rights groups over the country’s decision to detain the group without charges.
It was also becoming apparent that it was going to be very difficult to deport some of the migrants — as Panama said it was planning to do — because many came from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the Central American nation.
If the government of Panama had chosen to hold these people until it could deport them, it might have been holding them for months or more.
At the beginning of March an international coalition of lawyers filed a lawsuit against the government of Panama before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights claiming that the detention of the migrants violated domestic and international laws, such as the American Convention on Human Rights.
Panamanian officials have repeatedly said that two U.N. agencies — the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. refugee agency — were in charge of the group at the camp.
But neither agency has been present on a daily basis at the camp. Instead, it is Panamanian officials who guard the camp, control access and run daily operations inside. The camp is a fenced campus, migrants have not been permitted to leave and journalists have not been permitted to enter. Most migrants inside have not had access to legal counsel, according to a few migrants inside who still have cellphones.
Mr. Ábrego said in his remarks that the migrants would be able to speak to their lawyers by today or tomorrow.
A spokesman for Panama’s security ministry, Aurelio Martínez, said the migrants could move freely in the country, but for no more than 90 days.
“After those 90 days if they stay in the country then they would be staying illegally,” he added.
Mohammad Omagh, a 29-year-old Afghan migrant who was deported from California to Panama, said on Friday that he and a group of men were called into an office to sign several forms allowing for their release.
When he asked if he could apply for asylum in Panama, he said the authorities told him that Panama was not accepting any asylum applications and staying long term was not an option.
He and 14 other men, all of them single, signed the documents, he said.
“They told me you can leave the camp and take a bus to Panama City or wherever you want to go, we are not responsible for you anymore,” he said in a telephone interview from the camp. He said he did not have enough money to pay for hotels and meals.
“It feels like Panama just wants to get rid of us and they don’t want to be responsible for us,” Mr. Omagh said.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
