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Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for "reclaiming" the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama's military and, absent that, possible war.
Mar 13, 2025
This is a breaking news story... Please check back for possible updates.
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to "take back" the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama's military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Last week during his joint address to Congress, Trump proclaimed that "to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal," but his administration has not clarified precisely what "reclaiming" entails.
The Republican president says the U.S. needs to retake control of the Panama Canal to enhance "economic security," and has falsely claimed that the waterway is "operated by China."
Earlier this month, the New York-based investment firm BlackRock led a group of investors in a $23 billion deal to purchase ports at both ends of the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, an agreement Trump dubiously seized upon as proof that "we've already started" reclaiming the conduit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Molina countered that "the Panama Canal is not in the process of being reclaimed... The canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!"
The U.S. controlled what was formerly called the Panama Canal Zone from the time of the waterway's construction in the early 20th century—largely done by Afro-Caribbean workers, thousands of whom died in what's widely known as the world's deadliest construction project—until then-President Jimmy Carter transferred sovereignty to Panama in the late 1970s. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the U.S. reserves the right to use military force to defend the canal's neutrality.
The United States has repeatedly used deadly military force in Panama over the decades, including during a 1964 student-led uprising against American control in which 22 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed, and in a full-scale invasion in 1989 ordered by then-President George H.W. Bush to capture erstwhile ally and CIA asset turned narcotrafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaders killed hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians.
Writing for Americas Quarterly this week, Panamanian jurist Alonso E. Illueca argued that Panama's efforts to appease Trump aren't working. These include the BlackRock deal and other moves like quitting China's "Belt and Road" initiative, taking in third-country migrants deported by the U.S., backing a U.S. resolution on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, auditing the country's ports, and revisiting a railway project originally developed by the Chinese government.
"Panama should abandon its accommodating policy towards the U.S., which can only lead to escalating demands to banish Chinese influence, to the detriment of Panama's national sovereignty," Illueca asserted.
"An alternative policy for Panama is to align with the rules based international order," he continued. "This includes establishing synergies with like-minded states which have been also affected by U.S. actions such as Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Denmark. The country should seek to transcend the U.S.-China binary and find alternatives for alliances, which should include partners like the European Union."
"In short," Illueca added, "the way forward for Panama lies in replacing strategic dissonance with strategic clarity."
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'Blizzard' of Anti-Immigrant Trump Moves Aimed at Remaking US in 'MAGA's Preferred Image'
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: They are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said one advocate.
Feb 21, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy, characterized by a relentless stream of policies and proclamations, has extended to his anti-immigration agenda, with a "blizzard" of news stories this week detailing the administration's hostility toward and endangerment of asylum-seekers and immigrants across the country.
One immigrant rights organization on Friday advised the public not to lose sight of the overarching goal of the Trump administration and his MAGA movement as people try to make sense of the harms being imposed on their communities: to "embark on a radical reshaping of America that tramples on both our interests and our values."
America's Voice, which works to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., said that "the sheer volume of immigration policy news is best viewed in the aggregate, taking into account the array of proposed and enacted policies and the larger through lines and implications."
This past week, as Common Dreams reported, Americans learned about the fates of about 300 people who had come from all over the world to seek safety in the U.S., only to be deported to Panama—which has agreed to serve as a "bridge" country in Trump's mass deporation operation—and locked in a hotel before many of them agreed to board flights back to their home countries. About 100 of them, including eight children, were sent to a remote detention camp near the sweltering Darién jungle where authorities confiscated their cellphones, cutting them off from contact with journalists.
"None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters."
That news came ahead of reports that Trump was revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, making them eligible for deportation starting this summer even as "Haiti continues to be roiled by violence and disorder," as America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas said.
As Common Dreams reported on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior moved to cut off legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, ordering organizations that have helped tens of thousands of children to stop providing representation to them and ending funding for the legal programs.
On top of those developments were the shifting of Department of Homeland Security resources away from investigating drug dealers, suspected terrorists, and weapons trafficking to deportation operations—which have swept up thousands of people with no criminal records—and the firing of federal health inspectors at some border stations while the administration has said it plans to begin turning away migrants on the grounds that they could spread communicable diseases.
"The disconnect and hypocrisy was a particularly stark reminder that the administration isn't motivated by keeping the public safe as much as keeping out and kicking out immigrants as their top priority," said America's Voice.
Cárdenas said the policies of the past week have made clear that "the Trump administration's anti-immigrant obsession comes at a high cost to all of us."
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: they are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said Cárdenas. "It is particularly egregious that this administration is going yet again after children by preventing their access to legal representation. None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters, as their immigration agenda and plans for indiscriminate mass deportations will harm each of those measures. Instead, it's part of a larger effort to remake the nation in MAGA's preferred image."
As the administration introduced new policies and the human impacts of its anti-immigration agenda were made increasingly clear, the White House released an "ASMR" video this week featuring the sounds of handcuffs and chains being used in Trump's mass deportations. It also posted to social media a Valentine's Day message threatening to deport people who are unauthorized to be in the United States.
"Trump's intention is not to solve a problem but to create one as he puts on a show of cruelty for his supporters with his plan for mass deportations," wrote Maribel Hastings, a columnist with America's Voice. "Trump 'thrives' on the chaos he creates he purposely provokes to maintain a narrative and justify actions such as indiscriminate detentions and deportations."
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'A Moral Stain on All of Us': Outrage Over US Deportees at Panama Jungle Camp
Nearly 100 asylum-seekers are being held in a sweltering camp with "fenced cages," one woman reported.
Feb 19, 2025
An Iranian Christian woman who is one of nearly 100 people being held in a detention camp in Panama after being deported by the Trump administration described the site as looking "like a zoo" on Wednesday, with "fenced cages" and little sustenance provided by authorities.
"They gave us a stale piece of bread," Artemis Ghasemzadeh told The New York Times before officials reportedly confiscated the deported asylum-seekers' phones. "We are sitting on the floor."
The Times reported that eight children are among the asylum-seekers being held in the camp, called San Vicente.
Ghasemzadeh was one of about 300 people who were sent to Panama on a deportation flight earlier this week—first to be locked in rooms at the Decapolis Hotel in downtown Panama City, and then, in the case of about a third of the migrants, to be loaded onto buses headed for the camp near the Darién jungle.
At the hotel, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) met with the asylum-seekers, none of whom have criminal records, according to Panamanian officials—despite the Trump administration's repeated claims that people who have committed violent crimes will be prioritized for its wide-scale deportation operation.
"There is no world in which this is acceptable."
Officials confiscated the asylum-seekers' passports after they arrived at the hotel. At least one person attempted suicide while locked in the hotel, and another broke his leg while trying to escape.
"There is no world in which this is acceptable," said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, of the migrants' deportation and detention.
The IOM offered to coordinate flights to the migrants' home countries, but Ghasemzadeh, other Iranian Christians in the group, and some of the other people said they risk retribution—including possibly being put to death—if they return to the countries they left in order to seek asylum in the United States.
The BBCreported that 171 of the migrants—who came to the U.S. from India, China, Uzbekistan, Iran, Vietnam, Turkey, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka—agreed to be sent back to their home countries.
A local attorney seeking to provide some of the refugees with legal counsel, journalists, and aid groups have been blocked from speaking with the detained people and from seeing the conditions at San Vicente, the Times reported.
Times reporters gained information from two of the migrants who shared their locations using their cellphones, but Ghasemzadeh informed them Wednesday morning that officials at San Vicente were confiscating the phones.
"Please try to help us," she told the reporters after describing the camp as being extremely hot and "overrun with cats and dogs."
The treatment of the refugees, said Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU, is "a moral stain on all of us."
Panama's national security minister, Frank Ábrego, told a local news program Wednesday that the asylum-seekers are being held "for their own protection."
The Trump administration, which has arrested at least 41,169 people in its deportation raids, applied intense pressure to the Panamanian government to convince officials there to detain people who couldn't be deported to their home countries.
The government agreed Panama would be a "bridge" country for deportation flights after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country, which followed Trump's threats to use military force to "recover" U.S. control of the Panama Canal.
In Panama, it is illegal to detain people for more than 24 hours without a court order.
On Thursday, a deportation flight is set to arrive in Costa Rica with 200 people from Central Asia and India. Costa Rica has also agreed to be a "bridge" country for Trump's deportation operation.
The news of the conditions in which the deported people are being detained came a day after the White House posted an "ASMR" video featuring the sounds of Trump's anti-immigration operation: the jangling of chains, locking of handcuffs around people's wrists, and steps taken by refugees as they board flights.
"ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is the pleasurable tingling some people experience in response to certain stimuli, often sound. There are millions of social media videos dedicated to the genre," wrote Natasha Lennard at The Intercept. "For the Trump administration, that pleasure is derived from the sounds of human bondage and racist exclusion."
"To me, the sound was a clarion call," she continued. "The thundering of a fascist machine that demands people of conscience stand up to gum up its works, that the clink of those chains should be silenced with blockages and blockades."
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