CNN
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Panama will allow more than a hundred undocumented immigrants deported by the United States to stay in the country for at least another 30 days, Security Minister Frank Ábrego said on Friday.
The group, mainly from countries in Asia and the Middle East, will receive temporary humanitarian permits for one month that could be extended up to 90 days, Ábrego told reporters, adding that the individuals had declined repatriation help from the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration.
They were among an original group of nearly 300 migrants sent to Panama from the US as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, which it has pressured Latin American nations to help with.
CNN has previously reported that the group includes asylum seekers who say they are fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries. The remaining group of 112 deportees includes nine people from Afghanistan, 12 from China, 24 from Iran and two from Russia, Ábrego said.
Many of the group have been held in a makeshift camp near the remote Darien jungle.
Attorney Ali Herischi, who represents Iranian asylum seeker Artemis Ghasemzadeh and nine other clients in the camp, told CNN on Friday that they remained there and were afraid to sign paperwork to leave, because “the exact terms of the release today are unclear.”
Ghasemzadeh fled Iran out of fear of persecution after converting to Christianity, and fears her life will be at risk if she is forced to return. “We are in danger,” she said in text messages to CNN in February. “We are waiting for (a) miracle.”
A group of lawyers representing the deportees – who previously filed suit against Panama in the Inter-American Commision on Human Rights – welcomed Friday’s decision in a statement, but emphasized that asylum seekers should not be repatriated at the end of the 90 day-period.
“Today, in the context of our pending lawsuit, the Panamanian government has changed course – they have made a commitment not to deport our clients and to release them from incommunicado and arbitrary detention,” said Silvia Serna Roman, an attorney and co-counsel in the case, in the statement.
“Our primary concern is that the government offers no solution to our clients who cannot return to their countries due to a fear of persecution.”
Among the deportees are several children and dozens of people who fear persecution back home, including on the basis of their religion or their sexual or gender identity, according to the lawyers’ statement and a summary document seen by CNN.
The migrants were originally confined to a hotel in Panama City, before some were moved to the remote camp, which Herischi described as tough and dirty, with limited access to medication and the internet.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has repeatedly denied that authorities have violated the deportees’ rights in accepting their deportation or confining them while in Panama.
“These organizations are respectful of human rights. It’s false and I deny that we are mistreating them,” Mulino has said.
CNN’s Yong Xiong, Caitlin Danaher, Michael Rios and Omar Jimenez contributed reporting.
