2,044 events on record Subscribe September 10, 2026
Standing Record home The Standing Record A non-partisan record of US democratic norms —
and the events that erode them.

Biden administration began funding Panama's deportation of US-bound migrants

The Biden administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Panama on July 1, 2024, under which the U.S. State Department and DHS fund and help run Panama's own deportation flights for migrants transiting toward the United States through the Darién Gap. The Congressional Hispanic and Black Caucuses had urged the administration to halt the funding before it was finalized, warning Panama's asylum system lacked the capacity to screen people — particularly Venezuelans and Haitians fleeing persecution — before returning them to danger.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
United States; destination Panama (Panama City)

Abuses documented

Actors

On July 1, 2024, the Biden administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Panama's newly inaugurated government under President José Raúl Mulino, committing State Department funds to help Panama detain and deport migrants transiting toward the United States through the Darién Gap — a route more than 500,000 people crossed in 2023 alone. Under the deal, DHS sent asylum and enforcement personnel to train and assist Panamanian authorities, and the U.S. Embassy later confirmed the MOU had provided approximately $14 million to fund 48 charter flights and 20 commercial tickets deporting migrants to countries including Colombia, Ecuador, and India. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called it part of "a regional response" to migration, while Mulino had campaigned on a pledge to "close" the Darién Gap.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus had urged the administration to halt the funding before it was finalized, warning in an October 2023 statement that migrants in Panama — "particularly those from Venezuela and Haiti" — were "escaping political persecution, desolate poverty, and treacherous violence," and that funding their removal "would send a dangerous message about the obligations of receiving countries to protect migrants and asylum-seekers." The International Refugee Assistance Project documented that Panama's asylum agency, the National Office for Attention to Refugees (ONPAR), had opened only a single-staff, one-room asylum office in a temporary container in the Darién as of January 2024, and that UNHCR's capacity to support non-refoulement compliance in the region was similarly limited — raising serious doubts about how the program could conduct meaningful protection screening for the up to 2,000 people per month it contemplated removing.

The Trump administration later extended and expanded the same MOU, with DHS reporting that 2,044 migrants were deported from Panama to 23 countries between August 2024 and June 2025, and citing the arrangement as a model when it signed its own migrant-deportation-funding MOU with Costa Rica in April 2025.

Updates

2025-07-31 — Senate resolution requested human-rights accounting for people removed to Panama [4]

Sen. Tim Kaine introduced S.Res.354, requesting the Secretary of State report to Congress on Panama's human rights practices within 30 days, including alleged arbitrary detention and due process violations against people who are not Panamanian citizens but were removed to Panama by the U.S. government.

Why we recorded this

Paying a transit country to detain and deport migrants before they can reach the United States achieves a border-enforcement outcome without the individualized asylum screening due process requires, regardless of which administration signs the check. The Biden administration funded exactly this arrangement with Panama beginning July 2024, over the explicit warning of members of Congress that Panama's asylum agency had only a single-staff, one-room office as of that January — plainly insufficient to screen the volume of people the program contemplated removing.

Sources

  1. U.S.-Panama Migration MOU Facilitates 48 Deportation Flights of Illegal Migrants — U.S. Embassy Panama primary accessed July 31, 2026
  2. U.S. will fund deportations from Panama, expanding migrant crackdown — Washington Post investigative accessed July 31, 2026
  3. U.S. Funding of Deportations From Panama is Unprecedented and Deeply Concerning — International Refugee Assistance Project investigative accessed July 31, 2026
  4. S.Res.354 — Requesting information on the Republic of Panama's human rights practices — U.S. Senate primary accessed July 31, 2026

See also