SÃO PAULO, Brazil – After 10 months, some of the Asian and African nationals looking for refuge in the United States who were deported to Panama in February still live there. The Catholic Church is among the institutions that have been helping them survive their legal limbo.

Only a few weeks after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, his administration sent 299 asylum seekers and immigrants from countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Nigeria to Panama on military aircraft.

Trump had threatened to seize the Panama Canal when a sudden agreement between the U.S. and the Central American nation was announced. The deal, like those reached with other governments, stipulated that Panama would receive deportees from countries to which the U.S. could not directly return them.

The group, which included both individuals and families, was initially placed in a hotel, where they were kept in a kind of detention: There were armed agents forbidding them to leave and they didn’t have access to cellphones.

Then, they were taken to a lodging facility in the Darien Gap, an area of rainforest located between Colombia and Panama. Every year, several migrants coming from South America and heading to the U.S. cross the dangerous region, facing natural hazards and criminal organizations.

By mid-March, at least 179 such asylum seekers had already decided to go back to their countries, despite the challenges they would face. Many of them soon took the road again, following the route to the United States. Others kept arguing it was just too risky to go home and remained in Panama.

With no government assistance, Christian churches – especially the Catholic Church – found shelters and fed them, trying to keep morale high. Part of them was taken to a sports hall, while others were sent to live at Hogar Luisa (Luisa Home), maintained by the Archdiocese of Panama’s Human Mobility Pastoral Ministry.

The perception of Catholic people who aided the deportees was that the Panamanian government didn’t have a real plan to deal with them. They faced a juridical impasse, given that they could never apply for asylum in the U.S. and had no permission to live in the Central American nation.

Temporary resident documents were issued for them in different moments, each time with a different expiration deadline. Catholic groups were fundamental in helping the foreigners to obtain such documents by putting pressure on the government.

“Those who keep living here now have a one-year permit. Those who hold a passport are allowed to work,” Jorge Ayala, executive secretary of Panama’s Bishops’ Conference’s Human Mobility Pastoral, told Crux.

The Church has been directly accompanying at least 15 of them over the past months, and is paying the rent of the apartments where part of them are living. Given that many managed to find work – especially as domestic employees – the idea is that they will soon be able to pay the rent themselves.

Spiritual assistance is an important topic. Some of the asylum seekers were Catholic converts living in nations like Iran, where they were under threat. In Panama City, they finally could attend Mass at the cathedral.

“Besides that, we had a full family from Vietnam that converted and asked to be baptized here,” said Scalabrinian Sister Ligia Ruiz, also a member of the Human Mobility Pastoral.

Ayala and Ligia Ruiz learned that many of the deportees were detained again and deported when they tried to get into the US for the second time. Some in the group have been looking for other ways.

An Afghan young lady, who was even raped as she went in her journey from Afghanistan to the U.S., managed to receive asylum in Panama. Others did so in Chile. Another group is applying for asylum in Canada.

In March, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino declared he didn’t know if there were more flights to come and implied he wasn’t willing to receive more asylum seekers.

“It was a good thing that they didn’t send more people. If many more were to come, and all of them were just abandoned here, I don’t know what the situation would be,” Ruiz said.

Similar situations happened in other parts of Latin America, especially in Costa Rica and El Salvador. African nations, like Eswatini (Swaziland), also received third-country nationals deported by the United States.

By now, Ligia Ruiz said that there’s a continuous flux of Latino immigrants coming back from the U.S. and passing by Panama.