Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ deportation strategy sends migrants to third countries in Latin America

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Venezuelan migrants handed over to Mexico like it’s a U.S. immigration detention facility. Families from Central Asia flown to Panama and Costa Rica to await voluntary repatriation to their countries. Venezuelans from Guantanamo Bay handed off on a Honduran tarmac and returned to Caracas.

It all sends the unmistakable message that trying to get to the U.S. border is no longer worth it. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has laid the groundwork to reverse the region’s migration flow. And while the numbers remain modest, an outline of how the U.S. hopes to overcome limited detention space as it gears up its deportation machine is emerging.

Making deals across Latin America

In its first month, the Trump administration has reached deals with Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama to act as stopovers or destinations for migrants expelled from the U.S. It has brokered deals with Venezuela to pick up its people in Texas, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Honduras.

But none of the agreements have been detailed for the public, raising concerns about evading international protections for refugees and asylum-seekers. Adam Isacson, a researcher with the Washington-based human rights advocacy organization WOLA, suspects many were little more than improvised “handshake deals.”

They were requests made while Trump threatened tariffs and to take back the Panama Canal. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio moved through the region while U.S. foreign aid was suspended, bestowing exemptions when merited.

Trump made deals during his first presidency with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to take in asylum-seekers, though only Mexico and Guatemala actually received them.

But the agreements in his second term are more varied, ranging from Honduras letting Venezuelans get off a U.S. plane and board a Venezuelan one in its territory last week, to El Salvador offering to imprison deportees — and even U.S. citizen prisoners.

“They’re being much more ambitious now,” Isacson said. “The idea of sending people to be warehoused like goods, to deport them to third countries wasn’t an issue” in Trump’s first term.

The numbers remain relatively small, but images of deportees deplaning in shackles and deportees holding up signs asking for help in the Panama hotel where they’re held are powerful.

‘Shock and awe’ to get things started

This is still a preliminary phase because Congress has not approved a new budget, Isacson said. “While they’re at that lowest level of resources they are doing all of the shock and awe possible,” he said. “The idea is to scare them.”

Now the migration flow that is visible is of deportations and migrants boarding boats in Panama to take them south to Colombia rather than migrants riding trains north through Mexico or massing at the U.S. border.

In just a month, Mexico has received more than 3,300 foreign deportees, who advocates say were from at least seven nationalities.

A number of them carried unusual U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents that read: “Reason for transfer: removal. Name of new facility (immigration): MEXICO.” They appear to have nothing to do with the Remain in Mexico program from Trump’s first term that made asylum-seekers wait out the U.S. process from Mexico.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has said little about Mexico’s participation other than highlighting her administration’s willingness to cooperate. The U.S. Department of State has praised Mexico for receiving deportation flights and for returning migrants from elsewhere to their countries.

Farther south the numbers are smaller, but the imagery has been stronger.

Panama, a bridge in the other direction

Panama, where more than 500,000 migrants passed en route to the U.S. border in 2023, suddenly became a bridge this month for U.S. efforts to deport asylum seekers. Nearly 300 U.S. deportees from 10 mostly Asian countries were held in a Panama City hotel. Some put signs to their windows that read “Help” and “We are not save (sic) in our country.”

About one-third of those in the hotel who refused to voluntarily return to their countries were then sent to a remote camp back in the very jungle they had probably crossed in the other direction. One deportee in the camp told The Associated Press they were not informed of their rights and weren’t told how long they would be in the camp, which concerned her because of its poor conditions.

Similar flights landed in Costa Rica last week and they were sent to a remote facility that had also previously received migrants headed north.

In addition to those flights, 50 to 75 migrants are moving south through Costa Rica on their own daily, according to Omer Badilla, Costa Rica’s vice minister of the interior.

He raised the possibility of Panama and Colombia getting involved to organize boat trips south for migrants. On Tuesday, Panama Security Minister Frank Abrego said that boats were carrying migrants south with the “full knowledge of regional authorities,” but he added that they were “irregular” arrangements made with boat captains.

Panama and Costa Rica say U.N. agencies are assisting with the repatriations and that the U.S. government is paying. The International Organization for Migration said that it was helping authorities provide basic services and facilitating voluntary repatriations “when it is safe to do so.”

“With the old flow (south to north) the situation is pretty under control,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said Thursday. “That shows that now the problem is coming in the opposite direction and we hope that can be managed in an orderly fashion.”

Concerns about vulnerable migrants

Even with the involvement of U.N. agencies, concerns abound about vulnerable migrants being passed from country to country and even sent back to countries they fled.

Advocates worry the U.S. may be using third countries to deport migrants from countries where the U.S. may not have diplomatic relations or strained ones, to get around constraints in international law that are supposed to prevent people from being sent back to places they would not be safe.

Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization in Mexico, said recently a flight carrying Venezuelans from the United States to Venezuela made a stop in Cancun. But IMUMI wasn’t able to speak with the migrants aboard directly to know if they wanted to try to request asylum in Mexico while in the country’s territory.

Isacson said among the Venezuelans sent back to that country have been people who deserted the armed forces, who would now be in the hands of the military. The risks could be even more dire for some migrants from Iran and Afghanistan.

The region’s governments are understandably sensitive about appearing to be aiding in Trump’s deportation efforts, but Isacson said transparency will better shield them from those criticisms.

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Associated Press journalist Juan Zamorano in Panama City contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america