Update on the Stranded and Forgotten in Panama and Costa Rica

Six weeks after returning from our Solidarity Trip to Panama, the fate of individuals and families who were expelled from the US two months ago without any due process still hangs in balance. Our partners with the Franciscan Network for Migrants (RFM) and Fe y Alegria continue to serve these vulnerable populations while pressuring local authorities to offer tangible solutions.

Meal Program at Paso Canoas, Costa Rica

With the support of Quixote Center donors, RFM scaled up the number and quality of the meals they serve to migrants at their Paso Canoas meal program, located on the border with Costa Rica. These families with children are mostly Venezuelans who are returning South because they were stranded between Mexico and Panama when the US government abruptly halted the asylum process through the CBP One app. The meal program has served over 800 people since launching the initiative to respond to the increasing number of people in need crossing the Costa Rica-Panama border.

Meanwhile, the Jesuit organization Casa Arrupe continues to provide counseling and humanitarian support to migrants and deportees. This week they met with the families expelled from the US to Costa Rica to explain the latest government decree offering them humanitarian visas and an opportunity to apply for asylum. After detaining these families for months at the Costa Rican Migration Detention Site - CATEM - the authorities in Costa Rica finally acted following a lawsuit for their mistreatment of minors.

The situation in Panama is also evolving, with 81 of the US deportees stranded in Panama City returning to their country of origin on board charter flights on May 7th. It is unclear who paid for those flights, or whether these were voluntary or forced returns. The Fe y Alegria gymnasium shelter still serves 35 people who continue waiting for a viable solution, because returning to their home country is not an option for them.

Speedboats docked in Miramar

Migrants returning South continue to arrive daily at the coastal town of Miramar to take speedboats to Colombia. In response, with Quixote Center support, RFM started a meal program for the migrant community, in collaboration with the local Catholic parish. They usually prepare 150 meals a day but, on some days, they need to serve more food if a larger group arrives in town. They receive the migrant community at the local church where they hand out tickets for the meals that they serve at noon. With our support, the parish also provides clothes and hygiene kits, particularly for the most vulnerable, including the many young children and infants they receive.

This week also marked the culmination of the training of trainers' program for human rights observers and nonviolent action that Quixote Center and RFM organized. The ten participants representing 5 different countries in Central and South America presented their final project on May 6th and are now ready to train volunteers in their communities on these essential skills. The Panama team will be training volunteers as observers in Paso Canoas and in Miramar, to make sure local authorities uphold the rights and dignity of migrants.

RFM also continues their essential work running the Medalla Milagrosa shelter in David that serves migrants and their families with medical conditions who cannot travel. In addition to providing food and lodging, the shelter offers assistance with medical care and social work. This month they upgraded the children's room to bring life and color to this important space. Thanks to each of our donors for making these children's lives brighter.

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A State of Crisis and Human Misery

by Beemo Gheringhelli

Participant of Quixote Center's Solidarity Trip to Panama in March 2025

"Apparently nobody wants to know that contemporary history has created a new kind of human beings - the kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes and in internment camps by their friends."[1] - Hannah Arendt

            Migration is framed as a "crisis" in the hegemonic statist narratives reproduced by mainstream media. However, the crisis is a creation of the state which is exacerbated by borders and the militarization of forced stasis for all. Inventions of citizenship, documentation, and legality further fan the flames of crisis. As Hannah Arendt famously wrote of her stateless status as a Jewish refugee in 1943, "society has discovered discrimination as the great social weapon by which one may kill men without bloodshed; since passports or birth certificates, and sometimes even income tax receipts, are no longer formal papers but matters of social distinction."[2] Today, citizenship and loyalty to a particular political ideology has become the standard justification for the continued repression of people who are racially othered by the top-down authorities in the United States and the transnational elites throughout the world. Human rights are "guaranteed" for those with the proper documentation and the correct skin tone, and such distinctions are upheld and legitimized by a global apartheid system of white supremacy and class privilege which, in the words of the Kichwa poet Sonia Guiñansaca, "dictates which bodies have rights to live, breathe, move."[3]

            I recently traveled with the Quixote Center[4] on their latest trip to Panama to see the country's response to migration through the Darien with my own eyes. However, with the resurgence of authoritarianism in the United States and the various measures aimed at deporting, disappearing, and terrorizing migrants, the realities in Panama had changed prior to our arrival. Instead of seeing the Darien (where we were informed "there are no more migrants,")[5] our plans shifted to visit an emerging site of reverse migration where people, mostly Venezuelans, were attempting to leave Panama southward toward Colombia. In conjunction with their local partners at La Red Franciscana para Migrantes (The Franciscan Network for Migrants)[6], the Quixote Center provided us with access to such locations where migrants were being hindered or helped along their journeys. This included two additional sites, one in Costa Rica and the other in Panama, where people expelled from the United States on Trump's deportation flights have ended up.

[1] Arendt, Hannah. 2008. The Jewish Writings. Reprint edition. New York: Schocken.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Guiñansaca, Sonia. 2024. Taraxacu. Quito, Ecuador: Corredores Migratorios. Translated from the original Spanish.

[4] The opinions expressed in this piece are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Quixote Center or their partners. Visit https://quixote.org/ to read more on their organization.

[5] This is a claim that we were not able to verify, though I maintain my doubts that migrants are no longer traversing the Darien at this time. Despite the political and media rhetoric which seems to justify Trump's inhumane and outright racist migration policies, the Darien remains a pivotal and strategic geography for state control of human mobility and living labor.

[6] https://redfranciscana.org/panama/

Continue reading Beemo's article and add your comments HERE

Watch our Webinar

Stranded and Forgotten

On April 8th, 2025, Quixote Center hosted a webinar to share our findings from our Solidarity Trip to Panama and Costa Rica in March when we visited with people who were expelled from the US and met with stranded migrants trying to return home. We invite you to watch the recording below in case you missed it.

Meet our New Intern

Amanda Valenzuela

Amanda is a rising third-year international affairs student at George Washington University. She is passionate about human rights work, Latin American studies, as well as community organizing. On campus, she is the president of Latam@gw, a student-led organization that brings Latin American political discourse to campus. Amanda is excited to join the Quixote Center this summer!