While U.S. 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 U.S. deportees back to their countries.
Panama has received the first U.S. 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.
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 U.S. government had requested.
