Deportees will be sent to Darien camp in the midst of ajungle bordering Columbia —AP

AP PANAMA CITY

Panama transferred 98 deportees from various nations it had received from the United States to a camp in its Darien province Wednesday, an area that became the main thoroughfare for migrants travelling from South America to the US border in recent years, a government official said. The migrants sent to Darien Gap, a heavily forested region along the Colombian border, had refused to voluntarily be repatriated to their countries and will be held there until third countries can be found to take them, said the Panamanian official familiar with the situation who requested anonymity..

They were part of a larger group of 299 migrants sent to Panama by the US government as the Trump administration tries to accelerate deportations. The others remained under police guard in a Panama City hotel awaiting travel arrangements to their countries. The Panamanian government has denied that they are detained, but they are under police guard and not allowed to leave the hotel.

Panama's National Immigration Service had announced earlier Wednesday that one migrant, a Chinese woman, who had escaped the hotel, has been recaptured. Security Minister Frank Abrego wrote on a post on social platform X that she was found abandoned near a migrant processing facility along the northern Panama-Costa Rica border, a high-transit point for migrants headed toward the US. While it was not clear if she was found in Panama or in Costa Rica, he blamed her brief escape on "human traffickers”.

The deportees, primarily from Asian countries, are in a sort of limbo in Panama after the Central American nation agreed to serve as a transit point for migrants who are hard for the Trump administration to deport directly to their countries. Abrego had said on Tuesday that 171 of the migrants had agreed to return to their countries of origin, although he did not provide a specific timeline. He also noted that an Irish citizen had already been repatriated.