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By Elida Moreno
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama's security minister said on Tuesday that more than half of the migrants deported from the United States to transit point Panama in recent days had accepted voluntary repatriations to their home countries, largely in Asia or the Middle East.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration deported the migrants on three flights, part of his crackdown on unlawful migration.
The 299 migrants have been staying at a hotel in Panama City under the protection of local authorities and with the financial support of the United States through the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. refugee agency, Security Minister Frank Abrego said.
"Today I can tell you that 171 of the (migrants) have accepted to return voluntarily," said Abrego, adding that the others will leave gradually when the U.N. provides them with their return transportation.
In the interim, those migrants will likely be transferred to a shelter near the Darien Gap jungle in southern Panama that connects Central America with South America.
After talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this month, Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino announced that a deal signed in July with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could be expanded so that Venezuelan, Colombian and Ecuadorean migrants could also be repatriated from Panama.
(Reporting by Elida Moreno; Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Edwina Gibbs)
