The Daily - Exporting America’s Immigration Problem

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

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.

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 Ali Aziz 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 is obviously a huge priority for President Trump. In his first week alone, he suspended the asylum program. He said that no new people would cross over the border. And on top of all of that, he pledged to deport millions of people who are already in the country, which is a huge and really complicated thing to undertake. So, can you just explain to us, what have we seen so far, and what does that tell us about how the new administration has begun tackling this issue?

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 US 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 Hamid received a tip that a group of recently arrived migrants in the United States were going to be deported to Panama.

So I'm based here in Columbia 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, 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 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 De Cablas 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. window, he writes China in toothpaste. And eventually we're able to connect over text message.

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 friend's passports, and most of his friend's 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's a lot of desperation. Did you manage to speak with anybody else in the hotel? 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 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 asylum seeker I

have documents showing that I converted to Christianity and she thinks that that will be enough to help her seek asylum. 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 shackled, handcuffed, and the government tells her that they're putting her on a military plane. And 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, okay, 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 signed 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, 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. 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? 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 US, 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 Al-Yaziz on how this new strategy could accelerate the mass deportations that President Trump has promised. We'll be right back. So Hamid, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. We just heard from our colleague, Julie,

about all of these people who were picked up in the US and flown to Panama. And I want to understand how this fits into Trump's broader strategy on immigration, which you cover. So can you unpack all of this a bit for us? Definitely. The Trump administration has been quite vocal about wanting to do a mass deportation campaign, historic deportations never seen before, millions of people.

And thus far, the pace of removals is not something that is extremely high or is reaching the levels that President Trump had promised. And we've seen already some Trump administration officials, including his borders are Tom Homan, say that they need a higher pace of arrests, higher pace of enforcement and deportations, so we can see that there's already some frustration at the pace. Which feels sort of surprising because I feel like the news recently has been full of stories about ICE raids and detentions all around the country.

There have been raids in Chicago, Los Angeles. We recently saw New York City. Mayor Eric Adams let ICE into Rikers, the jail here. So just explain how exactly is all of this actually much slower than it appears? Yeah, the process of deportation is actually quite complicated. And what ICE and the Trump administration is running into is that it's one thing to arrest hundreds of people in an operation. It's another thing to take those people who are arrested and actually deport them to their

home country. That process can take a long time. So making an arrest does not equal an immediate deportation. And some of the things that are in the way right now are the fact that ICE has a limited number of detention beds across the United States. ICE has been holding around 40,000 people for the past couple of weeks, and you need to hold people in ICE detention in order to deport them. And on top of that, some countries are very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to deport to.

There are countries that the United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with, such as Afghanistan or Iran, where ICE officials cannot send chartered ICE planes to those countries. Then there are others others like India and China who make the deportation process quite complicated. And it seems like with this Panama flight, they're turning more aggressively to getting other countries

to take multiple flights of migrants from across the world. So in other words, what we heard about that was happening in Panama is almost like a workaround to some of what you've just described as the difficulties with deportations. And as Julie explained to us earlier, by flying people to places like Panama, we're essentially making these people somebody else's problem. But I just want to be clear in understanding sort of what's different here, because the US has been doing a version of this in recent years in Mexico.

We deport non-Mexicans to Mexico. So how is this different exactly? In recent years, the Biden administration got Mexico to take back migrants from mostly Spanish-speaking countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and other Central American countries. In this instance, Panama is taking migrants from across the globe, mostly from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including Iran, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. A lot of these migrants do not speak Spanish and the scope of countries involved is unlike

anything we've seen before. And one thing to keep in mind here is that the negotiations involved in the way this came about is much different as well. With Mexico, there was a real formal deal in place where the Biden administration officials repeatedly said that Mexico, in order to take back migrants from other countries, also wanted the Biden administration to allow these migrants to have a chance to enter the country through different legal pathways. They were able to sign up to show up to a port of entry later on and

enter the United States that way. But in this case, we don't really understand what the deal was between Panama and the United States. What do you mean by that? Well, obviously, President Trump has been talking repeatedly about taking the Panama Canal and the government of Panama is quite aware of what has happened to other countries who've run into the hornet's nest, that is the Trump administration and immigration enforcement.

We saw with Colombia, President Trump, threatening visa sanctions and all kinds of consequences for Colombia pushing back on a military deportation flight that was set to land in their country. Elsewhere we see tariffs threatened on Mexico and Canada because the Trump administration has said they are not doing enough on migration. And it serves as a real deterrent in many ways. That is, forcing countries like Panama to get on board and play ball and be willing to, at a moment's notice, take multiple flights of migrants from across the world. So in other words, Trump doesn't necessarily have to come out and threaten them.

They're looking at what's happened with all these other countries and thinking like, what's going to happen to us if we don't take this plane full of people? Exactly. The precedent has been set. And recently, Secretary of State Rubio went to Panama to discuss migration. And afterward, these flights of migrants from across the globe landed in Panama. And last week, we saw Costa Rica come out publicly and say that they were going to take migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere as well. And more than 100 of those migrants, mostly families, arrived in Costa Rica last week.

Okay, so for Panama and presumably anybody else that makes this sort of agreement, they've agreed to accept these flights. What does that mean for the people who were actually sent there? It's a major change for these people. In the United States, when migrants are in detention, they have the ability to at least ostensibly find a lawyer, connect with immigrant advocates, try to find some form of a process, potentially an immigration court where they can seek asylum. The fact that the migrants are in Panama, they are not under US law anymore. They are not given the same scope of possibilities that are offered in the United States.

Instead, they are transported to a totally different process. They don't know whether or not they will have access to an attorney, what the process to get asylum in Panama would look like. There's a lot of confusion involved, and it's much different than it would have been had they remained in the United States. And just to be clear, is it legal to take somebody who's come to the U.S. seeking asylum and basically drop them somewhere entirely different with a different asylum system and possibly different set of rights?

I'm not sure. The United States and the Trump administration has said that these were formal removals and advocates are certainly concerned about what's happened here, really questioning the process that was involved here and are looking into it. But whether or not it's legal potentially could play out in federal courts in the future. And presumably take a very long time while the Trump administration expands this program with other countries? Definitely.

I spoke recently with President Trump's boarders, our Tom Homan, who told me that they are having active conversations with countries about safe third country deals, allowing the Trump administration to send migrants to countries across the world. And it wouldn't surprise me if some of these conversations were with countries in Europe and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. But the success of this type of effort will not just depend on expanding the number of countries willing to take in migrants, but expanding the nationalities that are to take in migrants, but expanding the nationalities that are involved in this deportation effort.

What do you mean by that? Well, it would be not just Iranians or migrants from Pakistan. It would be other migrants who suddenly show up at the border in higher numbers. In any potential problem that they have with deporting those migrants, they could find another country to take them in. You know, I really have to say that just the idea that we would take somebody that crossed into the United States from one continent and deport them to an entirely different continent where they don't know anyone, speak the language, have any resources, that just seems like a

much more extreme tactic than anything I've ever heard of discussed with US immigration policy. Definitely. This is unprecedented and unlike anything that I've seen before, where migrants from Iran, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan are dumped in Panama. And I think it serves as a clear deterrent to migrants from across the globe. But what you have to remember is that if the United States and the Trump administration is able to build an efficient deportation system where people are picked up and removed from the country quickly, no matter what conditions they're in, and he doesn't face political backlash, then that'll be a massive win for him and all of his supporters who've wanted him to begin this mass deportation process.

Hamid, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Here's what else you need to know today. On Saturday, Elon Musk alarmed workers across the federal government with an email that asked them to summarize what they'd accomplished last week. And on social media, he warned that a failure to reply would be taken as a resignation. But on Sunday, some Trump-appointed agency leaders pushed back, including the FBI director Cash Patel and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who told employees not to respond at all. The pushback marks the first significant test of how far Elon Musk's power will extend.

And, over the weekend, the Vatican said that Pope Francis is suffering from initial mild kidney failure in addition to a serious respiratory illness and remains in critical condition. The 88-year-old pontiff was alert and well-oriented, they said, as he continues treatment in a hospital in Rome. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Shannon Lin, Will Reed, and Alex Stern. It was edited by Maria Byrne, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nymisto, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Farnas Fasihi, Federico Rios,

Yasi Shafai, and Ang Lee. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.