Panama accepted 299 third-country deportees under expanded, unwritten MOU

On February 2, 2025, the United States and Panama expanded an existing Memorandum of Understanding originally signed in July 2024, under which the U.S. began forcibly transferring migrants and asylum seekers to Panama who were not Panamanian nationals. Roughly 299 people — including nationals of Afghanistan, China, Iran, and other countries — were flown to Panama on flights that February, many expelled without any individualized screening for a fear of persecution, under the authority of a Trump administration proclamation asserting the power to suspend asylum processing at the border entirely.

U.S. Senator Edward Markey wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that August noting that five months after the February flights, "dozens of people remain in vulnerable situations" in Panama, with no clarity on what would happen to them next, and that Congress had still not received the specific agreements or arrangements governing the transfers despite Case-Zablocki Act reporting obligations. Deportees were initially held at a remote camp near the Darien jungle before being moved to a Panama City hotel; advocacy groups warned that with limited money, little or no Spanish, and uncertain legal status, many — particularly women and children among them — were vulnerable to exploitation.

2026-05-13 — Panama issued executive decree creating new transit regime, flights resumed

Panama's Ministry of Public Security issued Executive Decree No. 8, published the same day in the country's official gazette, creating a "Special and Temporary Transit Regime" for Spanish-speaking nationals of the Americas included in international repatriation-cooperation programs between Panama and other countries — the operative legal instrument for a fresh wave of flights roughly fifteen months after the February 2025 transfers, with no separate U.S.-side agreement or announcement made public. The first flight under the new regime arrived May 14, 2026, one day after the decree's publication, carrying Honduran nationals; a second flight followed June 5, 2026 with Colombian, Paraguayan, Ecuadorian, and Dominican nationals aboard, and a third arrived June 19, 2026.