For days, they say they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world.

The group of unauthorized migrants, which includes children, were bused to the camp late Tuesday night. “It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” said one of the detainees.

Panama has transferred about one-third of the deportees from various nations it had received from the United States to a camp in its Darien province Wednesday, an area that became the main thoroughfare for migrants traveling from South America to the U.