On Forced Deportations

The terror of transport to an unknown land

An Iranian Woman in Panama, February 2025

Last week the New York Times reported on some three hundred U.S. asylum seekers held kidnapped in a Panama City hotel by the Panamanian government, in cahoots with the U.S. government. These individuals, originally from Iran, Afghanistan, China, and elsewhere in Asia, were blocked by armed guards from leaving their rooms for a week. The Times reported at least one detainee attempted suicide, and another broke their leg in a desperate escape attempt. Some detainees were able to communicate with journalists on the ground only by writing on their hotel windows with toothpaste.

One woman, a 27-year-old Iranian Christian, told the Times that if deported back to Iran she might face capital punishment. Refusing an offer of a chartered flight “back home,” after a week trapped in the hotel, she was forcibly loaded onto a bus and driven through the night to a remote concentration camp in the jungles of the Darien Gap. There, she lacks access to a lawyer,…