“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.” – Hannah Arendt (1)
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.
On our first day, we crossed the Panama border into Costa Rica at Paso Canoas and visited CATEM (Centro de Atención Temporal para Migrantes), a Costa Rican state-run “shelter” for migrants. This location now holds roughly 125 people from countries outside of Latin America who were recently expelled by the United States government. Upon arrival, it became clear that there was no freedom of movement for either migrants or those of us who wanted to visit. The closest we could get to the people being warehoused within this detention-like facility was glancing at some of the folks through a chain-linked fence. Our presence was not welcomed by the military running the facility. Two men in uniform approached the gate, took our pictures without consent, and proceeded to tell us that we were not authorized to enter nor were we authorized to know anything about the activities or conditions within the detention facility. According to our local guides, CATEM is supposed to shelter migrants for five days. However, this group had been held for over a month by the time we arrived as the Costa Rican government has no clear plan for these people in their custody.
The second major location was Miramar, a small town on the Caribbean coast of Northern Panama, roughly three hours driving from Panama City. This town had been receiving attention because of an increasing number of migrants seeking passage back south since the Trump administration’s enactment of their racist policies. We had no idea what to expect when we arrived. A small group of us entered a bright pink house with no doors or windows. There were yoga mats and personal items bunched up on the floors of each bedroom. Suddenly, we were surrounded by a group of Venezuelan men eager to tell their stories in hopes of securing the $90 needed to reserve a spot on the next boat out of town in the direction of Necoclí, Colombia. Little did they know that officially Necoclí was no longer accepting boats of migrants coming from the North. I spoke with a group of men standing around an open fire where they were roasting plantains. One of the men complained of sleeping on the floor for over a month, of not being able to find work to afford the boat trip, and of receiving no help from the Red Cross or IOM (The United Nation’s International Organization for Migration) who had just recently set up shop in the center of town. No one that I spoke with wanted to stay in Panama. This was just a transit point that had now entrapped them in a miserable daily existence. Barred from traveling northward, not able to afford the return trip southward, and made even more precarious through the state necessity for paperwork, these men exposed the stupidity of state thinking through their circumstances. A point I’m sure was lost on the US ambassador who was visiting Miramar with a Panamanian police detail at the same time as us.
Finally, back in Panama City we were privileged enough to visit Fe y Alegría, a shelter run by Red Clamor(7), which functions as a temporary home for many of those left from the Panama-bound US deportation flight. Weeks earlier the Panamanian government had locked these people away in a city hotel where they made headlines by displaying signs asking for help. Red Clamor and La Red Franciscana had negotiated with the government to provide support for this group, which is how Fe y Alegría was born. Unlike the Costa Rican facility that functioned under surveillance and controlled mobility, the people at Fe y Alegría were able to come and go as they please and interact with visitors and the outside world via free Wi-Fi (a service ironically provided by Elon Musk’s Starlink). We were encouraged to speak to residents, which was often facilitated through translation apps. I was lucky enough to speak with a handful of people, all of whom had been in San Diego for no more than a week before being rounded up and expelled by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Everyone I spoke with had been granted legal entry to the US under asylum protocol. One man from Sri Lanka was fleeing violence at the hands of armed groups who were looking to kill all witnesses of their crimes. Two women from Iran told me how they feared for their lives after converting to Christianity. A group of Ethiopians recounted their escape from the country’s civil war and their quest for better living conditions as many of their family members are stuck in refugee camps on the Sudan border. All these people currently face further expulsion from Panama when their “grace period” runs out. By accepting these deportation flights, Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador have become accomplices to the United States’ human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
Scratching the surface of any complex situation reveals only the most superficial understandings of reality. That is what we did. We barely touched the current migration situation in Panama and Costa Rica in the shadow of Trump’s arbitrary deportations and increased militarization of the border and daily life in the United States. We witnessed the haphazard responses of the Costa Rican and Panamanian governments with little direction or coordination between the two. We saw the effects of the global criminalization of migration in the faces of human beings caught in the political games of the rich and powerful and carried out by bureaucrats “just doing their jobs.” But there is so much more to this story. Although it was not enough to gain a profound understanding of the social, political, historical, and economic realities, it has brought many critical questions to light. Most importantly, I wonder just how much the corporate and political elites gain from this dehumanization in terms of lowered wages, defense contracts, private prison development, new technologies of surveillance and biopower, and the fundraising capabilities of so-called non-governmental organizations which profit from the state’s withdrawal from human welfare concerns. The classic liberal response of maintaining the status quo and voting for reform to reduce suffering is not enough. The project of crisis for profit has been laid bare many times over and simply wishing for things to be different has no effect. This is by design. This is the time for civil disobedience. This is the time to take back power where we stand and to become accomplices with each other instead of mere “allies” watching our migrant siblings kidnapped by a new secret police.
Quito, Ecuador
April 2025
(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/
(7) https://redclamor.org/
Add comment