If Salana is sent back to Afghanistan, she will be stoned to death. Of that, she is certain.<\/p>\n
Yet over the past six months, she has been asked \u2013 again and again \u2013 whether she will board a repatriation flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cry and I cry. I tell them I cannot go back \u2013 that I will be killed,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery time I sleep, I have nightmares of it happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salana was one of 299 immigrants to be marched on to military planes and deported from the United States to Panama in February<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Most have since left Panama<\/a> \u2013 some even attempting to return to the US \u2013 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are stuck. This is no life. We cannot move forwards,\u201d said Sharity, a Nigerian deportee who fled political violence.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s decision marked a devastating setback for Salana, who, since the Taliban stormed Kabul, has been trying to find a safe country to settle in.<\/p>\n Migrants from Afghanistan and Russia, who were deported from the US, wait at the Canadian embassy in Panama City on 18 March, in an effort to seek asylum. Photograph: Matias Delacroix\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cA distant relative was promoted high up in the Taliban and insisted on my hand in marriage,\u201d says Salana, who asked to use a pseudonym for her safety. \u201cHe was 57 and had two wives. I was 17, still a student. I was so scared.\u201d<\/p>\n With her family\u2019s support, Salana fled \u2013 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 \u2013 and deported back to Iran. \u201cI had nowhere to go,\u201d she says. \u201cI was alone.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cThey put me in detention, it was like a jail. They took my phone, and we didn\u2019t even have the right to take a shower,\u201d she says. \u201cI was shocked, but I kept thinking, at least now I am in a safe country.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey 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,\u201d 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. \u201cOur women have lost everything,\u201d Salana adds.<\/p>\n Afghan migrants deported from the US relax at a park after visiting the United Nations Refugee Agency office in Panama City on 20 March. Photograph: Matias Delacroix\/AP<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n She had worked as the secretary of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a proscribed separatist group<\/a>. In early 2024, Queen says she was abducted by a militia and held captive for two weeks. \u201cThey tortured me, raped me, flogged me, and told me never to work with IPOB again,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Queen says she immediately stopped her work, but that in December \u201cthey came back\u201d. \u201cThey were looking for me and attacked my father. They killed him and burned down our house,\u201d she says. \u201cMy husband and mother told me to run, and I did.\u201d<\/p>\n Queen also travelled to Brazil and up to the US. But like Salana, she was detained on entry and soon afterwards deported.<\/p>\n \u201cIt never crossed my mind that the US would treat us like that,\u201d she says. Many of those deported say they were never given an opportunity<\/a> to formally request asylum in the US, according to human rights groups.<\/p>\n On arrival in Panama, the deportees were first held in a hotel under police guard, unable to contact the outside world. One woman wrote<\/a> \u201cHELP US\u201d in lipstick on her window. It was here, the migrants say, that they were told \u201cgo back to your country or stay detained here\u201d. Those who refused were transferred to a camp in the Dari\u00e9n Gap, a hostile jungle home to venomous creatures and merciless heat<\/a>, 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 \u2013 and abandoned.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cassisted voluntary return\u201d. Human Rights Watch<\/a> said the \u201ccircumstances of their confinement and the \u2018choices\u2019 they were presented called into question the voluntariness of those returns\u201d. The IOM has said it does not carry out forced returns or pressure people into leaving.<\/p>\n Silvia Serna, a regional litigator at the Global Strategic Litigation Council, who was part of the team that filed a lawsuit over the migrants\u2019 detention, says the government has \u201cacted as if it didn\u2019t create the situation\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey counted on people opting for repatriation, or thought they could pressure them enough to repatriate,\u201d she says. \u201cAs time passes, it\u2019s become more clear that they never had a plan, and that they don\u2019t particularly care that there isn\u2019t a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cThe government has completely ignored us,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Iranian migrants who were held in a Panamanian camp after being deported from the US arrive in Panama City on 8 March. Photograph: Matias Delacroix\/AP<\/p>\n The deportees\u2019 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. \u201cThey\u2019re stuck in this limbo \u2013 what the government wants is for them to get tired and leave,\u201d Ayala says.<\/p>\n Accepting the flights \u2013 following political and economic pressure from Trump \u2013 has proved a point of contention for President Jos\u00e9 Ra\u00fal Mulino, who campaigned last year on promises to reduce immigration. \u201cWhether there will be more planes from the United States or not, I honestly don\u2019t know,\u201d Mulino said in March<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m not very inclined to do it, because they leave us with the problem.\u201d The Panamanian government did not respond to requests for comment, but has previously claimed that it has not mistreated the migrants.<\/p>\n At the two-storey Hogar Luisa house, a handful of the deportees sit day and night waiting for news. \u201cWe don\u2019t have anywhere to go. We don\u2019t speak Spanish. We don\u2019t have money,\u201d says Sharity, 36. \u201cIt has been terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n Salana is a rare exception: she was eventually granted asylum in Panama \u2013 but still has no work permit. \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019t know Spanish and have no teacher to learn it, and no money. I have no friends. I have no right to do anything,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Salana says she feels the deportees have \u201cbeen forgotten by the world\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been three years since I fled, and again I find myself trapped. I really try to stay strong, but I have little left.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Salana is sent back to Afghanistan, she will be stoned to death. 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