Artemis Ghasemzadeh didn’t come here to start a fight. She came here to survive one. A Christian convert from Iran — a crime that courts execution back home — she crossed into the United States seeking asylum. She brought a battered suitcase, a birth certificate, and a whisper of hope.
She didn’t get a hearing. She didn’t get a lawyer. She didn’t even get a question.
She got dumped.
Panama. A third country. A place she’d never seen, never requested, never even flown over. ICE called it “expedited removal.” We call it what it is: geopolitical laundering of a human soul.
In February 2025, they shackled her and shipped her to a hotel in Panama City — no sunlight, no due process, no warning. She scrawled “HELP US” on the window in lipstick — because that’s all she had. The photo made the front page. The administration didn’t blink.
Then came the jungle. The Darién Gap. They moved her to a remote camp near the edge of the most dangerous migrant trail in the hemisphere — a place where people disappear.
Snakes. Rot. Disease. The constant threat of violence. Women vanish here. Men too.
She was told it was temporary. And this time, it actually was.
In March, after weeks of pressure and media attention, Panamanian authorities released her with a temporary visa. One month. No clear future. No asylum. Just limbo.
She sleeps in borrowed rooms now. Eats what she can afford. Prays to a God she once trusted with her life.
This country didn’t just turn her away.
It exported her crisis.
And if it can vanish Artemis — a teacher who ran from death — what chance do the rest of us have?
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