Warning: This episode contains mentions of suicide.Since President Trump took office, his plan to deport millions of undocumented people has kept running into barriers. That has forced the White House to come up with ever more creative, and controversial, tactics.The Times journalists Julie Turkewitz and Hamed Aleaziz explain why some migrants are being held in a hotel in Panama.Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times, based in Bogotá, Colombia. Her recent work has focused on migration.Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy in the United States for The New York Times.Background reading: As President Trump “exports” deportees, hundreds have been trapped in a hotel in Panama.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Federico Rios for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What are the challenges faced by Trump's deportation plans?
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. Since taking office, President Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented people keeps running into new barriers. And it's forced the White House to come up with more and more creative solutions to fulfill his promise.
Today, my colleagues Julie Turkowitz and Hamed Aliaziz on one of the more innovative and controversial solutions so far. It's Monday, February 24th. Julie, we've had you on the show before talking about immigration, which obviously is a huge priority for President Trump. In his first week alone, he suspended the asylum program at the southern border.
He pledged that no new people would enter the country. And on top of all of that, he also pledged to deport millions of people who are already here, which is a huge and complicated thing to undertake. So can you just tell us what have we seen so far and what does that say about how the government has begun tackling this issue?
Chapter 2: How are Central American countries involved in U.S. deportations?
So President Trump has this major challenge, which is that his administration wants to deport a lot of people and wants to deport them quickly. But there are some people from some countries that it is very difficult for the United States to send back to their homelands. For example, the U.S. does not have good relationships with some countries. And so this makes deportations hard.
And so what the Trump administration has done in these past few weeks is convince other countries specifically countries in Central America to accept deportees who come from a totally different part of the world. Africa, Asia, the Middle East. And this is a crucial development that could allow the Trump administration to expand and speed up deportation.
And earlier this month, my colleagues and I actually got to see the beginning of the strategy up close. Tell us a little bit about that. What happened? So on Wednesday night, my colleague Hamed received a tip that a group of recently arrived migrants in the United States were going to be deported to Panama.
Chapter 3: What is happening at the Hotel Decapolis in Panama?
So I'm based here in Colombia and my photographer colleague and I, Federico Rios, decide we are going to get on a plane and try and track down the people who have recently been deported. We arrive in Panama. We hear from a source that the 300 or so people... are staying at a hotel in downtown Panama City called the Hotel Decapolis.
You know, Google says it's a four-star hotel, sort of in a touristy commercial area. And we arrive at this hotel. It's a pretty nice place. There's a sushi bar in the lobby. Hmm. And we try to get in, but we eventually can't get further than the lobby. And the hotel staff tells us that that is because there are hundreds of recently arrived migrants staying in the hotel.
So you're able to confirm that they're there. Are you able to also talk to them? No.
I mean, we have this journalistic challenge because we are not permitted to get further than the lobby. And the deportees, they're not allowed to leave. So Federico and I leave the hotel and we discover something very interesting, which is that the Decapolis Hotel is a soaring glass tower.
And so all of these people are essentially being held in glass boxes and we can see them from the sidewalk and we can see in the windows in this sort of glass tower that some people are speaking on the telephone. And so Federico has this idea, why don't we hold up a sign? And we write a sort of impromptu sign that says press across several pieces of white printer paper, as well as my phone number.
And we essentially lay this sign out on the sidewalk, sit and wait for a phone call. all of a sudden, a whole bunch of people begin to appear. And one of those people is a man who we eventually learn is named Mr. Wang. He sees Federico's camera, he sees my notebook, and he sort of, you know, gets excited. And on his window, he writes China in toothpaste.
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Chapter 4: Who are the migrants being held in Panama?
And eventually we're able to connect over text message.
I can only speak Chinese.
But what I discover is that Mr. Wong doesn't speak English. And so he's sending us audio files using a translator app on his phone.
My friend's passport and mobile phone are confiscated by them.
And he tells us that officials have taken away his passport, his friends' passports, and most of his friends' cell phones.
There are approximately 230 here, includes women and children.
He says that there are hundreds of people in the hotel, that they have been isolated, that they don't have access to lawyers.
We can't move at all. You can't go downstairs. Only waiting for waiting for waiting.
Eventually, we learn from others that at least one migrant woman tried to commit suicide by taking pills. And we hear reports that at least one person has tried to escape and has broken his leg in the process. So it's pretty clear from Mr. Wong and from others that there is a lot of desperation.
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Chapter 5: Why did some migrants refuse to return to their home countries?
Yeah. Our team ends up making contact with an Iranian woman named Artemis.
Artemis is inside the hotel. Federico and I can see her through the window. And she tells my colleagues in Farsi that she is an English teacher.
She's 27 years old and she's a convert to Christianity, which in Iran is punishable by death. And so she had decided to come to the United States and to claim asylum. She knows that Donald Trump is on a mission to deport migrants, but she doesn't think that that includes her because she has heard that the people who are being deported are criminals. And she thinks, I'm not a criminal.
I'm an asylum seeker. I have documents showing that I converted to Christianity. And she thinks that that will be enough to help her seek asylum.
And since I came here, I...
So Artemis takes this long series of flights from Iran to Mexico. She pays some $3,000 to a smuggler to get her essentially over the wall and into the United States, where she is then apprehended by authorities.
She's detained for several days, and then one day,
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Chapter 6: What are the conditions like at the Darien Gap camp?
shackled, handcuffed, and the government tells her that they're putting her on a military plane. Then she arrives in Panama.
Okay, so you've made contact with these people. They've told you their stories. But what do officials say is going on here?
So what the United States is saying is that these are people who are in the United States illegally, that these people do not have a valid case for asylum, and thus they should be deported. And Panama is the country that they have decided to deport them to. The government of Panama has said that as a favor, the government of Panama decided, OK, we can take some of the deportees.
While it might seem like this is a detention, the government of Panama is describing the decision to hold these people in this hotel as a security measure to protect the migrants.
So, Julie, this sounds like it would be really confusing for the people in this hotel. How long are they kept there?
So this group is detained in the hotel for about a week. And during the course of this week, this UN organization, the International Organization for Migration, is working inside the hotel with the Panamanian government. And they start to offer some of the migrants a trip home. They say, look, if you would like to go home to your country, we can help you. We will facilitate that.
And about 170 of the 300 people agreed. sign these papers. But there's a group of people that says, no, it's dangerous for me to go home. I cannot go back to my country. And so those people, they're still in the hotel. And one night they get a knock on the door and it's Panamanian authorities and they're saying, pack your bags, you're leaving.
And that includes Artemis, that includes a group of other Iranians that she is with. They're very scared and they're led downstairs, packed onto three different buses. They're not told anything about where they're going. An hour passes, two hours pass, three hours pass.
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Chapter 7: What message is the Trump administration sending to migrants?
And finally, the doors open and they find that it is morning and they are at a camp at the edge of this jungle called the Darien Gap.
The Darien Gap, that is something that we have covered with you on this show before. This is the only way for people in South America to cross into Central America by foot, and it's incredibly dangerous. And so now what you're describing is these folks are being sent to a camp right by it.
Yeah, so think of a sort of dirt expanse, a fence two to three meters high, surrounded by barbed wire. Mm-hmm. And Artemis and other people taken to this camp say they are given a stale piece of bread, a bottle of water, and they see these structures that look like shipping containers that they assume are going to be their shelters for the foreseeable future.
And looking around, seeing what she's seeing, does any of this change Artemis's mind about whether she wants to return to Iran?
So even though the conditions in this camp are very bad, Artemis is firm that she is not going to go back to Iran. She's told by an official there at the camp that there might be an option of applying for asylum in a different country that is not the U.S., But it's just really not clear. For now, this is her new home.
Right. The only thing that is clear is that she is not going back to the United States. Absolutely.
She's not returning to the United States. She is Panama's problem now. And Panama has to figure out what to do with her. And what we're seeing here is that the Trump administration wants to send a message to the world that it's not just... criminals who are going to be deported, but it's any migrant, any asylum seeker who shows up at the U.S. border asking for protection.
And I think that this is exactly what President Trump wanted and it is exactly what many Americans wanted.
After the break, my colleague Hamed Aliaziz on how this new strategy could accelerate the mass deportations that President Trump has promised. We'll be right back. So, Hamed, thank you for being here.
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