Trump’s Explosive Secret Plan to Stop Migrants Setting Foot on American Soil
EXCLUSIVE: Documents obtained by PunchUp and Migrant Insider reveal a DHS-built deportation system embedded in Panama—and a tiny window before automatic removal.
JOIN TOM LATCHEM AND LEADING IMMIGRATION ACADEMIC Austin Kocher FOR A VIDEO DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS INVESTIGATION LIVE ON PUNCHUP ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 AT 1030AM ET.
The Trump administration is moving to take its “remigration” crusade far beyond America’s borders.
A joint investigation by PunchUp and Migrant Insider has uncovered what appears to be a quiet effort to preemptively block potential immigrants to the U.S. by providing a DHS-built deportation system to the Panamanian government.
The U.S.-designed offshore deportation processing system, part of what is officially called the “Panama Repatriation Program,” would be used to turn back migrants arriving in Panama, which has long been a major transit hub for migrants making their way to America. It remains in the research stage—for now.
While the system was not explicitly designed to target U.S.-bound migrants, it appears to be a way for the Trump administration to stem the flow by facilitating an immigration crackdown in Panama with the help of U.S. funds and technology. It comes after the Central American country entered into a third-country deportation agreement with the Trump administration last year to accept Asian and African deportees from the U.S.
It also comes as the Trump administration has begun to openly embrace its stated goal of “remigration,” or reverse migration, a concept widely adopted by far-right extremist groups that calls for the forced repatriation of immigrants to their countries of origin. The State Department’s new Office of Remigration has been quietly operating since its establishment last year, part of a bid to get other countries to aid Trump’s mass deportation efforts by taking in deportees who hail from third countries.
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Publicly, the Panama project has been laundered into a generic-sounding “Migrant Case Management System”—but it has extraordinary potential implications for immigration into America and across the Western Hemisphere.
DHS’s own documents describe a system designed, built, funded and accessed by the United States—but operated on the ground inside Panama by Panamanian officials, the Servicio Nacional de Migración—to process immigration cases from first encounter to deportation flight, advancing migrants to automatic removal after a five-day window, at a scale of up to 6,000 cases per year.
DHS, asked to respond, told PunchUp and Migrant Insider the system “would have NO nexus with U.S. immigration enforcement.” But DHS’s own internal Performance Work Statement, in a section titled “Assumptions,” states “DHS/USG will be able to login” to the MCMS “and review case info as needed.”
A separate clause in the same document states that the system’s operational requirements are aligned to “the mission needs described by the Government of Panama and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)”—the U.S. government’s deportation arm.
PunchUp shared its findings with Rekha Sharma Crawford, an immigration attorney and advocate based in Kansas City. She said the system outlined in the documents could allow other countries to replicate Trump’s immigration crackdown beyond U.S. borders.
“This administration never does anything without a quid pro quo,” she said, speculating that the assistance to Panama might in turn allow the Trump administration to effectively repel migrants before they’ve even had a chance to set foot on U.S. soil.
She added that the proposals “fail to provide any safety nets for those fleeing persecution,” and that “there does not appear to be any accountability built in,” making human rights violations a “likely” outcome of the new system.
Sharma Crawford also offered a stark forecast of what the documents appear to say about the direction Trump’s immigration crackdown may be taking. “I think this is the master plan for global implementation,” she said. “Why would they stop hemispherically if they find a workaround for due process?”
Five days, then you’re gone
One of the most striking findings appears in the Migrant Case Management System Business Process diagram—the operational workflow document attached to the Request for Information [RFI], a formal notice that a government agency posts when it’s conducting market research before it commits to buying anything.
Under the workflow, an arriving migrant first encounters a screening gate—a decision node that asks whether the individual “fit[s] the profile for enrollment.” The documents do not define what that profile is. Those who don’t “fit” are routed away from the case-management track—“transport[ed] to [an] asylum country” or removed via “exit from host nation.”
Those who do are transported on to a second site for “ongoing case management,” where they are “served with order of detention.” They are then biometrically enrolled, biographically documented, and their identity is validated against U.S. watchlists. A five-day appeal window then begins.
If, within those five days, the migrant neither formally appeals nor formally claims fear of return, the process advances automatically. The case supervisor signs off, “disposition orders” are served, the migrant’s name is added to a deportation manifest, and a flight is scheduled out of the country. The case is marked complete.
The only off-ramps from the deportation conveyor belt are a successful appeal or an explicit fear claim—both of which require case supervisor approval.
“This deadline is designed to speed up Panama’s removal of people,” Sharma Crawford said. “This principle is something that the U.S. is currently actively employing, and this program furthers that goal across the region.”
She added, “Five days is unworkable, and I am betting that’s what they are counting on. This window is not really a window, it’s more like a trap door.”
Built in Washington, donated to Panama
The Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan, also analyzed by PunchUp and Migrant Insider, makes DHS involvement unambiguous.
In it, DHS is identified as the customer monitoring the performance of the contractor selected to handle immigration centers in Panama, suggesting the U.S. agency has oversight of the process.
In other words, the United States is not merely supplying software but also sending a contractor to Panamanian migrant facilities, identifying the hardware those facilities need, buying it, and ceremonially gifting it to the Panamanian government. The system that runs on it pipes data into U.S. biometric watchlists.
The Performance Work Statement identifies five named systems to be integrated into the Migrant Case Management System, three of which are American. They are PISCES, a State Department traveler screening platform deployed across multiple countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe; BDSP, the DHS Biometric Data Sharing Partnerships framework, which pipes partner-country biometric data directly into the DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management’s central repository of more than 300 million identities; and BITMAP, the ICE Homeland Security Investigations program that trains foreign police forces to collect biometric data on travellers and migrants and share it with the United States.
The other two are Panamanian—SIMPLUS, the National Migration Service’s existing border control and fingerprint database, and ONPAR, Panama’s National Office for Refugee Affairs that processes asylum claims.
At “Full Operational Capability”—twelve months in from the beginning of the contract—these connections go live. From that point on, every migrant enrolled on the platform is biometrically queryable against U.S. watchlists and identity systems, and their case file is maintained alongside Panama’s asylum-processing infrastructure.
In other words, the platform is wired into U.S. biometric infrastructure on one side and Panama’s asylum decision-making on the other. The deportation processing system and the refugee protection system would share the same backbone.
The Panama paper trail
The documents reveal that the project has been quietly reshaped over the past thirteen months.
The original DHS forecast for the project—published on Feb. 19, 2025, and still publicly viewable on the federal procurement intelligence platform HigherGov—was titled “Panama Case Management System (PCMS).”
It named Panama’s Servicio Nacional de Migración as the recipient agency. It cited the 302,000 migrants who entered Panama through the Darién Gap region in 2024 from South America, Africa, and South and Central Asia, as the operational rationale, stating that “many continue in transit across Panama to destinations in Central and North America.”
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The estimated budget was between $500,000 and $1 million. The point of contact was Michael Sheridan, an official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The original DHS-hosted version of that forecast page now returns a 404 error.
By the time the RFI itself went live on the federal contracting site SAM.gov on March 17 of this year, the public face of the project had been rewritten. The title had been changed to the generic “Migrant Case Management System.” Panama is not mentioned anywhere in the public-facing description.
The point of contact had also moved up the chain—from ICE to DHS headquarters. The named contracting officer is now Bjorn Miller, an associate director in the department’s Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, its headquarters-level acquisition shop.
The original forecast had listed an ICE official, Michael Sheridan, as the contact. It is not specified by how much the estimated budget had grown in line with the substantially increased workload.
Yet the controlling internal documents tell a different story. The 19-page Performance Work Statement attached to that public RFI is titled, in plain text on its cover page, “Panama Case Management System.”
The Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan is titled “Panama Repatriation Program / Panama Case Management System.” Every operational reference inside both documents is to Panama, the Government of Panama, the Servicio Nacional de Migración, and the Darién region.
The public RFI scrubbed Panama. The internal paperwork did not.
The technical specification, however, reads as a template. It requires a “commercial off-the-shelf” software product— already built, ready for redeployment. It must run in “a relatively austere environment, with limited bandwidth and connectivity.” It must operate in English and Spanish. DHS, in its statement to PunchUp and Migrant Insider, described the project as “part of long-standing precedent between State, DHS, and foreign partners”—plural.
“Market research,” with a 19-page scope of work
For a project DHS describes only as “market research,” the attached paperwork appears unusually substantial. The 19-page Performance Work Statement, the five-page Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan, the operational Business Process diagram and the RFI Questions document—all published alongside the public RFI—describe a fully scoped procurement.
It includes a base year plus two option years, defined performance standards, a 99.5 percent uptime requirement, a bilingual help desk, a contractor project manager designated as Key Personnel, and corrective-action plans for performance breaches.
A DHS spokesperson, asked by PunchUp and Migrant Insider to respond to our findings, said: “The Panama Case Management System is a proposed IT system that will assist with tracking aliens encountered in Panama. This system would have NO nexus with U.S. immigration enforcement — it is the result of an interagency agreement between DHS and State to help secure Panama’s borders.
“We need cooperation and assistance in combatting illegal immigration and securing our own border. This is part of long-standing precedent between State, DHS, and foreign partners.
“The RFI in question is NOT a solicitation, it is market research. DHS has conducted three rounds of research between December 2024 and March 2026 in accordance with federal acquisition regulations. As stewards of taxpayer dollars, it is important for DHS to do its due diligence and make a well-informed decision prior to awarding any contract. The RFI concluded on March 31, 2026, and career procurement professionals are reviewing responses.”
DHS’s “no nexus” claim sits awkwardly with its own Performance Work Statement. The document states that “DHS/USG will be able to login to PCMS and review case info as needed”—giving US officials direct access to the case files—and that the system’s operational requirements are aligned to “the mission needs described by the Government of Panama and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Enforcement and Removal Operations,” ICE’s deportation arm.
It’s not clear why the system’s operational requirements are aligned to “the mission needs described by the Government of Panama and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Enforcement and Removal Operations” if there is “no nexus” between the two.
Asked to address that contradiction, a department spokesperson did not respond.
The RFI did indeed close on March 31. DHS is now reviewing the responses. A department spokesperson was asked to comment on next steps. Again, they did not respond.
PunchUp and Migrant Insider also contacted the U.S. State Department and Panama’s Servicio Nacional de Migración for comment.
JOIN TOM LATCHEM AND LEADING IMMIGRATION ACADEMIC Austin Kocher FOR A VIDEO DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS INVESTIGATION LIVE ON PUNCHUP ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 AT 1030AM ET.
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