PANAMA CITY: Panama has received the first US flight carrying deportees from other nations as the Trump administration takes Panama up on its offer to act as a stopover for expelled migrants, the Central American nation’s president said Thursday.

“Yesterday a flight from the United States Air Force arrived with 119 people from diverse nationalities of the world,” President José Raúl Mulino said Thursday in his weekly press briefing. He said there were migrants from China, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among others, aboard.

The president said it was the first of three planned flights that were expected to total about 360 people. “It’s not something massive,” he said.

The migrants were expected to be moved to a shelter in Panama’s Darien region before being returned to their countries, Mulino said.

Asked later Thursday why Panama was acting as a stopover for these deportations, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ruiz Hernández said that it was something the US government had requested. He also said the US government was paying for the repatriations through UN immigration agencies.

The migrants who arrived Wednesday, had been detained after crossing the US border and did not have criminal records, he said.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Mulino in Panama. While US President Donald Trump’s demands to retake control of the Panama Canal dominated the visit, Mulino also discussed Panama’s efforts to slow migration through the Darien Gap and he offered Panama as a bridge to send US deportees back to their countries.

Rubio secured agreements on the trip with Guatemala and El Salvador as well, to accept migrants from other nations in what was seen as the laying groundwork for expanding US capacity to speedily deport migrants.

Migration through the Darien Gap connecting Panama and Colombia was down about 90 percent in January compared to the same month a year earlier.

Since Mulino entered office last year, Panama has made dozens of deportation flights, most funded by the US government.

Ruiz said Thursday that Panama “has been completely willing to participate and cooperate in this request they have made of us.”