Panama City — After weeks of lawsuits and human rights criticism, Panama on Saturday released dozens of migrants who were held for weeks in a remote camp after being deported from the United States, telling them they have 30 days to leave the Central American nation.

It thrust many like Hayatullah Omagh, a 29-year-old who fled Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban took control, into a legal limbo, scrambling to find a path forward.

“We are refugees. We do not have money. We cannot pay for a hotel in Panama City, we do not have relatives,” Omagh told the Associated Press in an interview. “I can’t go back to Afghanistan under any circumstances … It is under the control of the Taliban, and they want to kill me. How can I go back?”

Authorities have said deportees will have the option of extending their stay by 60 days if they need it, but after that many like Omagh don’t know what they will do.

Omagh climbed off a bus in Panama City alongside 65 migrants from China, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and other nations after spending weeks detained in poor conditions by the Panamanian government, which has said it wants to work with the Trump administration “to send a signal of deterrence” to people hoping to migrate.

Human rights groups and lawyers advocating for the migrants were waiting at the bus terminal, and scrambled to find the released migrants shelter and other resources.

Dozens of other people remained in the camp.

Among those getting off buses were migrants fleeing violence and repression in Pakistan and Iran, and 27-year-old Nikita Gaponov, who fled Russia due to repression for being part of the LGBTQ+ community and who said he was detained at the U.S. border but not allowed to make an asylum claim.

“Once I get off the bus, I’ll be sleeping on the ground tonight,” Gaponov said.

Others turned their eyes north once again, saying that even though they had already been deported, they had no other option than to continue after crossing the world to reach the U.S.

The deportees, largely from Asian countries, were part of a deal stuck between the Trump administration and Panama and Costa Rica as the U.S. government attempts to speed up deportations. The administration sent hundreds of people, many families with children, to the two Central American countries as a stopover while authorities organize a way to send them back to their countries of origin.

Critics described it as a way for the U.S. to export its deportation process.

The agreement fueled human rights concerns when hundreds of deportees detained in a hotel in Panama City held up notes to their windows pleading for help and saying they were scared to return to their own countries.

Under international refugee law, people have the right to apply for asylum when they are fleeing conflict or persecution.

Those that refused to return home were later sent to a remote camp near Panama’s border with Colombia, where they spent weeks in poor conditions, were stripped of their phones, unable to access legal council and were not told where they were going next.

Lawyers and human rights defenders warned that Panama and Costa Rica were turning into “black holes” for deportees, and said their release was a way for Panamanian authorities to wash their hands of the deportees amid mounting human rights criticism.

Upon being released Saturday night, human rights lawyers identified at least three people who required medical attention. One has been vomiting for over a week, another deportee had diabetes and hadn’t had access to insulin in the camp and another person had HIV and also didn’t have access to medicine in detention.

Those who were released, like Omagh, said they could not return home.

As an atheist and member of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan known as the Hazara, he said returning home under the rule of the Taliban — which swept back into power after the Biden administration pulled out of the country — would mean he would be killed. He only went to the U.S. after trying for years to live in Pakistan, Iran and other countries but being denied visas.

Omagh was deported after presenting himself to American authorities and asking to seek asylum in the U.S., which he was denied.

“My hope was freedom. Just freedom,” he said. “They didn’t give me the chance. I asked many times to speak to an asylum officer and they told me ‘No, no, no, no, no.’”

Still, he said that leaving the camp was a relief. Omagh and other migrants who spoke to the AP detailed scarce food, sweltering heat with little relief and aggressive Panamanian authorities.

In one case, Omagh and others said, a Chinese man went on a weeklong hunger strike. In another, a small riot broke out because guards refused to give a migrant their phone. The riot, they said, was suppressed by armed guards.

Panamanian authorities denied accusations about camp conditions, but blocked journalists from accessing the camp and canceled a planned press visit last week.

While international aid organizations said they would organize travel to a third country for people who didn’t want to return home, Panamanian authorities said the people released had already refused help.

Omagh said he was told in the camp he could be sent to a third country if it gives people from Afghanistan visas. He said that would be incredibly difficult because few nations open their doors to people with an Afghan passport.

He said he asked authorities in the camp multiple times if he could seek asylum in Panama, and said he was told that “we do not accept asylum.”

“None of them wants to stay in Panama. They want to go to the U.S.,” said Carlos Ruiz-Hernandez, Panama’s deputy foreign minister, in an interview with the AP last month.

That was the case for some, like one Chinese woman who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions from Panamanian authorities.

Upon getting off the bus, the first thing she wanted to do was find a Coca-Cola. Then, she’d find a way back to the U.S.

“I still want to continue to go to the United States and fulfill my American dream,” she said.
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SELMA, Ala. — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. 

The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion. 

At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. After they approached, law enforcement gave a warning to disperse and then unleashed violence. 

“Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back, to back us in, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time. 

Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration paid homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality. 

For foot soldiers of the movement, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all. 

“This country was not a democracy for Black folks until that happened,” Mauldin said of voting rights. “And we’re still constantly fighting to make that a more concrete reality for ourselves.” 

Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of the first mass meeting of the voting rights movement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. But he said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going. 

“At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration. 

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama said they are gathering in Selma for the 60th anniversary “at a time when the vote is in peril.” 

Sewell noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively abolished a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to pre-clear new voting laws with the Justice Department. 

Sewell this week reintroduced legislation to restore the requirement. The proposal has repeatedly stalled in Congress. The legislation is named for John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman who was at the lead of the Bloody Sunday march. 

The annual celebration will conclude with a ceremony and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the time, the Bloody Sunday marchers walked in pairs across the Selma bridge. Mauldin was in the third pair of the line led by Lewis and Hosea Williams. 

“We had steeled our nerves to a point where we were so determined that we were willing to confront. It was past being courageous. We were determined, and we were indignant,” Mauldin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. 

Mauldin, who took a blow to the head, said he believes law enforcement officers were trying to incite a riot as they attacked marchers. 

Kirk Carrington was just 13 on Bloody Sunday. As the violence erupted, a white man on a horse wielding a stick chased him all the way back to the public housing projects where his family lived. 

Carrington said he started marching after witnessing his father get belittled by his white employers when his father returned from service in World War II. Standing in Tabernacle Baptist Church where he was trained in non-violent protest tactics 60 years earlier, he was brought to tears thinking about what the people of his city achieved. 

“When we started marching, we did not know the impact we would have in America. We knew after we got older and got grown that the impact it not only had in Selma, but the impact it had in the entire world,” Carrington said. 

Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson, who grew up in Selma, remembers a time when she was expected to lower her gaze if she passed a white person on the street to avoid making eye contact. 

Dawson and Mauldin said they are concerned about the potential dismantling of the Department of Education and other changes to federal agencies. Trump has pushed to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government. 

Support from the federal government “is how Black Americans have been able to get justice, to get some semblance of equality, because left to states’ rights, it is going to be the white majority that’s going to rule,” Dawson said. 

“That that’s a tragedy of 60 years later: what we are looking at now is a return to the 1950s,” Dawson said. 
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Washington — U..S Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday condemned the “radical Islamist terrorists” behind “massacres” of minorities in Syria and demanded that the interim administration hold those responsible to account.

“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement.

“The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families,” he said.

“Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”

The violence against minorities erupted after gunmen loyal to ousted leader Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite minority, attacked the new security forces.

War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later reported that security forces and allied groups killed at least 745 Alawite civilians in Latakia and Tartus provinces.

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that spearheaded the lightning offensive that toppled Assad, called for national coexistence after the killings.

The United States under former president Joe Biden engaged with Sharaa after he came to power but said that any greater normalization would depend on meeting conditions including the protection of minorities.

Donald Trump, then president-elect, said at the time that the United States had little interest in Syria and should stay out, and he has previously spoken of removing U.S. troops in the country to fight the Islamic State movement.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has said little about Syria but has severely slashed assistance to groups assisting civilians in the war-ravaged country.

The United States did not join Britain on Thursday in announcing an easing of Assad-era sanctions on Syria.
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration rescinded a waiver on Saturday that had allowed Iraq to pay Iran for electricity, as part of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, a State Department spokesperson said.

The decision to let Iraq’s waiver lapse upon its expiration “ensures we do not allow Iran any degree of economic or financial relief,” the spokesperson said, adding that Trump’s campaign on Iran aims “to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program and stop it from supporting terrorist groups.”

Trump restored “maximum pressure” on Iran in one of his first acts after returning to office in January. In his first term, he pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, a multinational agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. government has said it wants to isolate Iran from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenues in order to slow Tehran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies pursuing nuclear weapons and says its program is peaceful.

For Iraq, the end of the waiver “presents temporary operational challenges,” said Farhad Alaaeldin, foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

“The government is actively working on alternatives to sustain electricity supply and mitigate any potential disruptions,” Alaaeldin told Reuters. “Strengthening energy security remains a national priority, and efforts to enhance domestic production, improve grid efficiency and invest in new technologies will continue at full pace.”

Washington has imposed a range of sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program and support for terrorist organizations, effectively banning countries that do business with Iran from doing business with the U.S.

“President Trump has been clear that the Iranian Regime must cease its ambitions for a nuclear weapon or face Maximum Pressure,” said national security spokesperson James Hewitt. “We hope the regime will put the interests of its people and the region ahead of its destabilizing policies.”

Pressure on Baghdad

Trump initially granted waivers to several buyers to meet consumer energy needs when he reimposed sanctions on Iran’s energy exports in 2018, citing its nuclear program and what the U.S. calls its meddling in the Middle East.

His administration and that of Joe Biden repeatedly renewed Iraq’s waiver while urging Baghdad to reduce its dependence on Iranian electricity. The State Department spokesperson reiterated that call on Saturday.

“We urge the Iraqi government to eliminate its dependence on Iranian sources of energy as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said. “Iran is an unreliable energy supplier.”

The U.S. has used the waiver review in part to increase pressure on Baghdad to allow Kurdish crude oil exports via Turkey, sources have told Reuters. The aim is to boost supply to the global market and keep prices in check, giving the U.S. more room to pursue efforts to choke off Iranian oil exports.

Iraq’s negotiations with the semiautonomous Kurdish region over the oil export resumption have been fraught so far.

“Iraq’s energy transition provides opportunities for U.S. companies, which are world-leading experts in increasing the productivity of power plants, improving electricity grids, and developing electricity interconnections with reliable partners,” the State Department spokesperson said.

The spokesperson played down the impact of Iranian electricity imports on Iraq’s power grid, saying, “In 2023, electricity imports from Iran were only 4% of electricity consumption in Iraq.” 
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NEW YORK — Fast-moving brush fires burned through a large swath of land on New York’s Long Island on Saturday fanned by high winds, spewing gray smoke and prompting the evacuation of a military base and the closure of a major highway. 

Officials said three of the four fires were fully contained while the other one, in Westhampton, was 50% contained. Two commercial buildings were partially burned, but officials said homes were not in the line of fire. One firefighter was flown to a hospital to be treated for burns to the face. 

“Our biggest problem is the wind,” Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said. “It is driving this fire.” 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency and said state agencies were responding to the fires around the Pine Barrens, a wooded area that is home to commuter towns east of New York City. 

“This is still out of control at this moment,” Hochul told Long Island TV station News 12. 

“We’re seeing people having to be evacuated from the Westhampton area,” she said, adding that more evacuations may be needed. 

Hochul said homes, a chemical factory and an Amazon warehouse were at risk. 

Videos posted to social media showed flames shooting into the air and columns of black smoke rising above roads. 

Air National Guard helicopters dropped water on the flames. 

The Town of Southampton issued a warning in the afternoon against starting recreational fires due to the wildfire risk. That came around the time that the videos began appearing. 

In a statement, Hochul said the National Guard was providing support by helicopter and working with local law enforcement. 

“Public safety is my top priority, and I’m committed to doing everything possible to keep Long Islanders safe,” she said. 

In her comments to News 12, Hochul declined to estimate the extent of the flames, saying only that they were growing rapidly. 

Rough satellite data indicated that fire and smoke stretched roughly 3 kilometers (2.5 miles) along Sunrise Highway, according to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System. 

Police closed a section of the highway, which is a thoroughfare to the East End of Long Island. 

The fires raged near the Francis S. Gabreski Airport, from which the National Guard launched at least one helicopter. One of the commercial buildings that partially burned was near the airport. 

Personnel at the base evacuated as a precautionary measure starting around 1:45 p.m., spokesman Cheran Cambell said in a statement. 
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