Panama

AlertIncommunicado detention and no asylum routePanama

Basis: a Human Rights Watch report drawn from interviews with 48 of the 299 people, the report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants who was in Panama during the events and visited the camp, and the Panamanian government’s own published account of what it offered. No body has found that Panama tortures anyone, and this page does not suggest it. The designation is for what was done to people who arrived: held without contact, refused lawyers, told they could telephone their families only if they agreed to go home, and released onto a thirty day clock that ends in deportation.

Human Rights Watch, on the hotel
People were “confined to their hotel rooms except for meals”, without their phones, which United States Border Patrol had taken and handed to Panamanian officials, and “they were not allowed to call lawyers or family on the outside unless they accepted assistance from the International Organization for Migration to repatriate”. Some lawyers tried to enter and “the authorities would not allow them to enter or to communicate with their clients”.
Human Rights Watch, on what an asylum claim got
Interviews lasting about ten minutes, followed a day later by a resolution of inadmissibility. Three such resolutions said the claims were “manifestly unfounded”. One man was told he could appeal but, in his account, “said not to bother. He said the decision would not change.”
The Ministry of Public Security of Panama, 7 March 2025
The 112 held in the Darién would get “a humanitarian permit for 30 days, extendable to a maximum of 90”, so that they could arrange their transfer to a third country. “After the 90 days, those who remain in Panama illegally will be deported.” Legal costs, accommodation and food would be borne “in their entirety by the migrants”.
United Nations Treaty Collection, the depositary record
Panama ratified the Convention against Torture on 24 August 1987 and has made neither the article 21 nor the article 22 declaration. No person in Panama can petition the Committee against Torture. Panama has ratified the Optional Protocol and has a national preventive mechanism, and it accepts the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court.

What an Alert meansDesignated September 10, 2026Review: on any decision of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the petition filed on 1 March 2025, on which nothing has yet been decided

The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.

What has happened

Between 12 and 15 February 2025 the United States flew 299 people who were not Panamanian to Panama on three flights. Three independent sources agree on that number, which is unusual enough to say: Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, and Panama’s own National Migration Service. They came from Afghanistan, Cameroon, China, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere, and they included women and children.

Arrangement. Documented in part. A memorandum of understanding of July 2024 has published operative text, but it is about moving people out of Panama after they cross the Darién, not about bringing people in from the United States. The February 2025 expansion that brought these flights was announced by both governments and has never been published. Treaties in Force carries no migration instrument for Panama at all.

Transferred. 299 people on three flights, 12 to 15 February 2025. Further flights in 2026 are reported by monitoring projects and the Coalition has not been able to confirm any of them against a government source.

People with protection among them. Investigating. What is documented is the opposite: doctors who examined 27 of them recorded that not one had been given the opportunity to explain to United States or Panamanian officials why they had left their countries.

Onward return. Documented. On Panama’s own figure 189 people went home under an assisted voluntary return programme run by the International Organization for Migration. Whether that was voluntary is contested and this page sets out both accounts.

The hotel, and then the camp

People walked off the aircraft between two rows of uniformed men, were put on buses, and were taken to the Decapolis Hotel in Panama City. They stayed there, depending on their flight, from as early as 12 February until 18 February. They were confined to their rooms except for meals. Their telephones had been taken by United States Border Patrol and handed to Panamanian officials. Human Rights Watch records that they were not allowed to call a lawyer or their family unless they agreed to be repatriated, and that those who agreed were allowed to use the migration agency’s telephones to call home.

Some of them worked out how to send messages from email accounts on the hotel television sets. Relatives contacted lawyers and journalists. Lawyers came to the hotel and were not allowed in, or allowed to speak to their clients. On 18 February people held up papers at the window. Human Rights Watch published a photograph of one reading “We are not safe in our country”. Cornell Law School records that its own clients, nine Iranian Christians, wrote “HELP US” on the glass.

On 18 February the 112 people who had refused to go home were moved to the San Vicente reception station in the Darién province, on the Colombian border, and detained there. Their telephones were still withheld. They were cut off until the Red Cross gave people three minutes each to call their families. A Chinese woman told Human Rights Watch that more than seventy women were living there, that there were no fans, that windows were not allowed to be opened and that mosquitoes were biting them. The men were in a large room with one fan, bunk beds, dirty mattresses and no sheets. Children held there did not attend school.

The first published count of the transfer to the camp, two days afterwards, was 97. Human Rights Watch and Panama’s own Ministry of Public Security both say 112, and this page uses 112 and records the earlier figure rather than quietly dropping it.

What ended it, and what it ended in

What ended the detention was not a court. On 1 March 2025 a petition and a request for precautionary measures were filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 112 asylum seekers, by a team led by Ian Kysel of the Transnational Disputes Clinic at Cornell Law School with Panamanian and international co-counsel. The theory was unusual and is worth stating in counsel’s own words: rather than suing the United States for deporting asylum seekers, the clinic sued the country that received them, arguing that “by knowingly assisting the U.S. in its wrongful acts, Panama also bears international responsibility”. Cornell records that Panama released the group within days of the filing and hours before it was due to answer the Commission. A habeas corpus petition had also gone to Panama’s Supreme Court.

Nothing in that case has been decided. No precautionary measures had been granted as at the end of March 2025, and the Coalition has been unable to open the Commission’s own registry to check whether anything has happened since. An allegation in a petition is not a finding, and this page does not treat it as one.

What people were released into was a thirty day permit. In the Ministry of Public Security’s own words its purpose was so that they could arrange their transfer to a third country; it was extendable to ninety days; after ninety days those still in Panama unlawfully would be deported; and legal costs, accommodation and food would be met in their entirety by the migrants themselves. Human Rights Watch reviewed some of the permits and records that they make no mention of applying for asylum in Panama. Cornell’s account is that the ninety days came with the opportunity to apply for asylum. Two of the three accounts, including the government’s own, say the permit was silent on it, and the Coalition does not resolve the conflict in either direction.

Human Rights Watch records what release meant on the day. People were put on buses and dropped in Panama City with no idea where they would go or whether their permits would be extended. An anonymous donor and a migrants’ rights group paid for three nights of hotel rooms and food for some of them, because otherwise they would have been left on the street in a city where they knew no one.

The asylum system a person is pointed at

The numbers here are small, and they come from the United Nations rather than from critics of Panama.

The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants recorded that in 2024 the National Office for Refugee Affairs received 461 applications in total and that there were 22 recognised refugees, and that the National Commission for the Protection of Refugees meets every two months. He found that asylum seekers in the Darién centres are “de facto detained”, that only in extremely exceptional cases are they allowed to leave while awaiting a decision on admissibility, which contradicts Panama’s own 2018 decree, and that because no maximum period is fixed in law they “may be deprived of liberty and kept in migrant reception centres for months”. His conclusion was that the combination “has the effect of turning asylum-seekers away”.

Human Rights Watch records, on the refugee agency’s figures, an average of 3.2 years from registration to an admissibility decision, and that as at June 2024 seven per cent of claims lodged since 2018 had received a decision. The Committee against Torture, the last time it examined Panama, was concerned at the “high percentage of asylum claims that are declared inadmissible (about 98 per cent)”. That examination was in August 2017, seven and a half years before these flights, and it is the most recent there is.

What routes exist, and the one that does not

The Committee against Torture is closed to individuals. Panama signed the Convention on 22 February 1985 and ratified it on 24 August 1987, and has made no declaration under article 21 and none under article 22. A person in Panama cannot complain to the Committee. Panama also entered a reservation to article 30(2).

There is a national preventive mechanism, and its mandate covers exactly this. Panama signed the Optional Protocol on 22 September 2010 and ratified it on 2 June 2011. The Defensoría del Pueblo is designated as the national preventive mechanism. Its own description of the places it covers names “administrative detention centres for migrants”, and its stated powers include “expedited and total access to places of deprivation of liberty… without any restriction” and the right to interview any person deprived of liberty “without witnesses”, with an interpreter if needed, in a place of its own choosing.

The Inter-American system is open. Panama has been a party to the American Convention since 22 June 1978 and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court on 9 May 1990. It is the forum in which the February 2025 case was brought.

The first days

Drawn from what actually happened in February 2025 rather than from what should have happened. Nothing below is advice, and no page can tell a particular person what to do in their case.

What exists, in the order in which it usually matters

Assume the telephone is the thing being used against you, and find another line out
Telephones were taken in the United States and handed to Panamanian officials, and in the documented cases a call home was offered in exchange for agreeing to be repatriated. What actually got word out was email accounts on hotel television sets, and messages to relatives who then found lawyers. Any line out is worth more than waiting for the official one.
Do not sign for a return you have not agreed to, and say so in front of a witness
The accounts conflict about what people were told. Some said they were told that if they did not go with the migration agency they would be deported by force in handcuffs and shackles. The agency denies saying it. Whatever was said, the decision to go home is the one that ends every other option, and it is worth putting a refusal on the record with a name and a time.
Call the Ombudsman, and ask for the Darién office if you are in the Darién
The Defensoría del Pueblo is both the national human rights institution and the body with an unrestricted right of entry to places where people are held. It was inside the hotel within days in February 2025, interviewed people over several days, and wrote formally to the government with recommendations. It is the fastest domestic route on this page.
Get a lawyer to file at the Inter-American Commission, because that is what worked
The detention ended within days of a filing in Washington. It did not end because a Panamanian court ordered it. The clinic that filed it is reachable and is named below.
Count the days on the permit from the day it is issued
The permit is thirty days, extendable to ninety, and the government has said in terms that people still in Panama after ninety days will be deported. Nobody in the documented cases knew what they had to do to get an extension. The clock starts at once and the cost falls on the person.

Who is reachable in Panama

Several of the lawyers who acted in February 2025 publish no way of being contacted. The Coalition names them anyway, because a reader may hear of them, and says plainly which ones can be reached.

Official bodies that take complaints

The national human rights institution, and the national preventive mechanism under the Optional Protocol. Its mandate expressly covers administrative detention centres for migrants and it has an unrestricted right of entry and of private interview. It had access to the Decapolis Hotel within days in February 2025

Defensoría del Pueblo de la República de Panamá

Address: Pueblo Nuevo, España Vía, P.H. Los Toneles GS-3, Panama City, 08:00 to 16:00
Telephone: +507 500 9800 and +507 500 9801; WhatsApp +507 6670 2222
Email: secretaria@defensoria.gob.pa
Website: defensoria.gob.pa

Checked 10 September 2026 · Defensoría del Pueblo, head office

The lawyers who acted in this case

Lead counsel in the petition filed at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on 1 March 2025 on behalf of 112 people held in Panama. The one door on this page documented to have opened

Ian M. Kysel, Transnational Disputes Clinic, Cornell Law School

Telephone: +1 607 255 5503
Email: imk48@cornell.edu

Checked 10 September 2026 · Cornell Law School faculty directory

Co-counsel in the same case were Álvaro Botero Navarro, Ali Herischi, Silvia Serna Román and Bella Mosselmans of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, and Jesús Vélez Loor. Two Panamanian lawyers acted for people in the group in February 2025, Jenny Soto Fernández, who represented about twenty-four people from India and Iran, and Susana Sabalza, who represented a family from Taiwan. None of these six publishes a direct email or telephone number that the Coalition could open, and it will not print a route it has not verified. The Coalition is seeking them and will add them when it has them.

What is not established

The text of the arrangement that produced these flights. The February 2025 expansion was announced by both governments and has never been published. Treaties in Force carries no migration instrument for Panama at all.

Anything decided by the Inter-American Commission. A petition and a request for precautionary measures were filed on 1 March 2025. No decision is established. The Commission’s own registry could not be opened.

The outcome of the habeas petition to Panama’s Supreme Court. It was filed. Nothing further is established.

Whether the coercion described actually happened. People told Human Rights Watch they were given a choice between going home with the migration agency and being deported by force in handcuffs and shackles. The agency told Human Rights Watch, in terms, that it never said any such thing and that it knew they were not going to be deported. The Coalition publishes both and finds neither.

Whether the permit allowed an asylum claim. Two accounts, including the government’s own, say it was silent on asylum. One says it came with the opportunity to apply.

The 2026 flights. Reported by monitoring projects and confirmed by no government source the Coalition could reach.

Any finding by any court or treaty body about any of this. There is none, in either direction. No court has ruled against Panama and none has ruled for it.

The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.

What runs the other way

The strongest point in Panama’s favour comes from the body least likely to flatter it. On 13 February 2025, the day after the first flight, the Defensoría del Pueblo toured the Darién with a delegation of the Inter-American Commission and recorded that it had verified the reception stations at San Vicente and Lajas Blancas “constatando que están en buenas condiciones”, in good condition. That is Panama’s own national human rights institution, exercising an inspection mandate under the Optional Protocol, and the Coalition publishes it in full.

Monitors did get in. The Defensoría was at the hotel within days, interviewed people over several days, and sent the government five formal recommendations on 18 February covering temporary regularisation, access to the refugee office, protection of children, checks against trafficking, and a standard reception protocol. A delegation of the Inter-American Commission was in the country in the week of the first flight. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants was in Panama from 13 to 19 February 2025, at the government’s invitation, and visited San Vicente himself. The Red Cross reached the camp and brought medicine. The refugee agency reached it in the second week, and its partner filed appeals in six inadmissibility decisions.

The migration agency disputes the coercion account outright and says it had suspended assisted returns to some of the countries concerned. Panama did release the group, issued 107 permits on its own count, and told Costa Rica’s security minister in March that those remaining had free movement. Journalists who followed people to a shelter in Panama City in April reported that they could come and go, use their telephones and look for lawyers. On Panama’s figure 189 people went home with their tickets paid, and no body has found that any of them was returned to a state that would torture them.

Panama’s own position is that its sovereignty was not in question and that it was implementing an agreed memorandum. The United States’ position, from its Department of Homeland Security, was that “these individuals are in the custody of the Panamanian government, not the United States”.

What this page does not yet carry

Whether the Inter-American Commission has decided anything in the petition filed on 1 March 2025. Every attempt to reach the Organization of American States site was refused, and this is the most important gap on the page.

Contact routes for the six co-counsel and the two Panamanian lawyers named above.

What became of the people who neither went home nor left. The ninety days expired in June 2025 and the Coalition has found no account of what happened at the end of them.

Confirmation from any government source of the flights reported in 2026.

If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.

Sources

Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.

United Nations. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, report on his visit to Panama of 13 to 19 February 2025, A/HRC/59/49/Add.2, paragraphs 25, 27, 42, 43, 44, 48 and 50. Committee against Torture, concluding observations on Panama, CAT/C/PAN/CO/4, 28 August 2017, paragraph 36, and the list of issues prior to reporting, CAT/C/PAN/QPR/5, 11 June 2020.

Reports. Human Rights Watch, on the expulsion of 299 people from the United States to Panama, 2025. Physicians for Human Rights, on the 27 medico-legal evaluations conducted between 19 and 27 March 2025 and submitted to the Inter-American Commission, 31 March 2025. Global Detention Project, 25 March 2025.

The Panamanian government in its own words. Ministerio de Seguridad Pública, statement of 7 March 2025 on the humanitarian permit. Defensoría del Pueblo, statements of 13 and 18 February 2025 and its annual report for 2024 and 2025. Servicio Nacional de Migración, 22 March 2025.

The litigation. Cornell Law School, on Ghasemzadeh and others v. Panama, filed at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on 1 March 2025.

Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, for the ratification of 24 August 1987, the absence of Panama from both the article 21 and the article 22 lists, and the reservation to article 30(2), and chapter IV-9-b for the Optional Protocol.

Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. Three claims that appeared in the Coalition’s working notes were removed before publication because they could not be verified: a detail about the wording written on a hotel window, a statement that the Inter-American Commission had granted precautionary measures, and an account attributing to Panama a family whose case in fact concerns Costa Rica. Corrections to the Coalition.