With this deportation, Panama has expelled 219 migrants in two weeks.
Panama on Friday deported 130 Indian illegal immigrants who had entered the country through the inhospitable Darien jungle, under a repatriation agreement signed with the United States in July.
This was the first such expulsion outside the Americas under the agreement, and the fourth in total.
Washington has pledged $6 million for migrant repatriations from the Central American nation in hopes of reducing irregular crossings at its own southern border.
Panama's migration chief Roger Mojica told reporters the Indians were deported on a chartered flight to New Delhi for “irregular migration.”
At the same press conference, the US security attaché for Central America, Marlen Piñeiro, said that Washington was “very grateful to the government of Panama for all this support” and added that “irregular migration cannot continue.”
The Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama has become a key corridor for migrants traveling overland from South America, through Central America and Mexico, to the United States.
Despite the dangers, including attacks by criminal gangs, more than half a million undocumented migrants, mostly Venezuelans, crossed the Darien River last year.
Transit countries such as Panama and Mexico have come under increasing pressure from Washington to address the highly contentious migration issue in a US election year.
The July agreement calls for a first phase of deportation of immigrants with criminal records, but could involve the repatriation of anyone who enters Panama through the notoriously dangerous and rugged Darien Gap region.
It was signed on the same day that Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino took office, after a campaign in which he pledged to crack down on crossings of the Darien Gap.
With Friday's deportation, Panama has expelled 219 migrants in two weeks.
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