A deportee from the United States detained in a camp in rural Panama, among a hundred who refused to return to their countries, described on Saturday waiting in limbo under “harsh conditions” and cut off from access to legal council and other rights.

The Chinese deportee, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation by Panamanian authorities, spoke to the Associated Press with a hidden cellphone after being connected through a concerned relative.

The woman said authorities were seizing the phones of migrants in the camp and effectively cutting them off. Migrants were from Asian nations, Russia, Afghanistan and Nepal, she said.

The migrant said that people in the camp were having their personal freedoms restricted, and that migrants faced both poor conditions in the camp and a strict vigilance from guards.

“Someone follows me even when I go to the toilet,” she said.

It’s part of a deal struck with the Trump administration in which countries like Panama and Costa Rica act as “bridges,” temporarily detaining deportees.

Originally, the migrants were locked up in hotel rooms by authorities in the country’s capital, Panama City. Panama denied that they were detained, but migrants were not allowed to leave their hotel and were guarded by police.

Those who refused to return to their home countries have been sent to a rural migrant camp the southern Darien province, near the Darien Gap a perilous jungle migrant passage between Panama and Colombia.

Musk’s team fires those regulating his company

Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is eliminating jobs at the vehicle safety agency that oversees Tesla and has launched investigations into deadly crashes involving his company’s cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has cut a “modest” amount of positions, according to a statement from the agency. Musk has accused NHTSA of holding back progress on self-driving technology with its investigations and recalls.

Asked about whether the cuts would impact any probes into Tesla, the agency referred to its statement that says it will “enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment.”

The job cuts at NHTSA enacted by Musk’s advisory group on shrinking the federal government, the Department of Government Efficiency, was earlier reported by the Washington Post.

In addition to investigations into Tesla’s partially automated vehicles, NHTSA has mandated that Tesla and other automakers using self-driving technology report crash data on vehicles, a requirement that Tesla has criticized and that watchdogs fear could be eliminated.

The staff reductions have come through a combination of firings, buyouts and layoffs. The agency noted that the Biden administration had expanded its payroll, suggesting the smaller staff was sufficient to carry out its mission.

NY gov. makes case for Manhattan tolls

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul made the case for Manhattan’s congestion tolling during an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump after federal officials ordered a halt to the program, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor said.

Hochul and Trump met for more than an hour on Friday afternoon and also discussed other issues including immigration, infrastructure, economic development, energy, offshore wind and nuclear power, press secretary Avi Small said. He said Hochul presented Trump with a booklet showing the early success of congestion pricing.

The Trump administration on Wednesday ordered a stop to the program, which launched Jan. 5 with the goals of thinning traffic and funding mass transit by imposing a $9 toll on most vehicles entering Manhattan’s core south of Central Park. Transit officials said the toll has brought modest but measurable traffic reductions.

Despite the federal order, the tolls are remaining in place for now because of a federal lawsuit aiming to keep them alive.

Penn. hospital shootout kills officer, armed man

A man armed with a pistol and carrying zip ties entered a Pennsylvania hospital’s intensive care unit on Saturday and took staff members hostage before he was killed by police in a shootout that also left an officer dead, authorities said.

Three staffers at UPMC Memorial Hospital, including a doctor, a nurse and a custodian, and two other officers were shot and wounded in the attack, York County District Attorney Tim Barker said. A fourth staff member was injured during a fall.

Gunfire erupted after officers went to engage the shooter, who Barker identified as Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49. He said Archangel-Ortiz was holding at gunpoint a female staff member who had her hands tied with zip ties when police opened fire.

Barker added that while the investigation is in its early stages, it appears Archangel-Ortiz had previous contact with the hospital’s ICU earlier in the week for “a medical purpose involving another individual” and that he intentionally targeted the workers there.

USDA scholarship for HBCU students on hold

A federal scholarship aimed at boosting students from underserved and rural areas attending historically Black colleges and universities has been put on hold.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended the 1890 Scholars Program, which provided recipients with full tuition and fees for students studying agriculture, food or natural resource sciences at one of 19 universities, known as the 1890 land grant institutions.

Boy dies as ‘reverse flow’ vessel capsizes

A boat carrying 19 migrants — part of a “reverse flow” of migrants who once hoped to reach the United States — capsized off the Caribbean coast of Panama on Saturday, claiming the life of an 8-year-old Venezuelan boy, border authorities said.

The boat, full of mostly Venezuelans and Colombians, carried 21 people in total, including two Indigenous Panamanians in charge of maneuvering the vessel headed toward Colombia.

Authorities say the accident happened because of choppy sea conditions, which discouraged two other boats from making the trip. Twenty people were rescued, Panamanian border police confirmed.

A growing number of migrants who once hoped to reach the U.S. have begun a “reverse flow” back to their countries of origin due to a tightening of immigration policy under U.S. President Donald Trump.

Fatal mall collapse kills 6, injures 78 in Peru

The collapse of a food court roof at a shopping mall in northwestern Peru killed six people and left at least 78 others injured, the defense minister said Saturday.

The heavy iron roof at the Real Plaza Trujillo shopping mall, a city in the La Libertad region, fell Friday night on dozens of people who were at the site.

Defense Minister Walter Astudillo said at a news conference that according to the information provided by local firefighters in La Libertad, five people died on site and a sixth at a hospital after the collapse.

Cholera outbreak kills 58 in Kosti, Sudan

A cholera outbreak in a southern Sudanese city killed nearly 60 people and sickened about 1,300 others over the last three days, health authorities said Saturday.

The outbreak in the southern city of Kosti was blamed mainly on contaminated drinking water after the city’s water supply facility was knocked out during an attack by a notorious paramilitary group, the health ministry said. The group has been fighting the country’s military for about two years.

The ministry said in a statement the disease killed 58 people and sickened 1,293 others between Thursday and Saturday in Kosti, 261 miles south of the capital, Khartoum.

Doctors without Borders said its cholera treatment center in the Kosti hospital has been overwhelmed, prompting health authorities to use adult and pediatric emergency rooms to provide additional space to treat stricken patients.

“The situation is really alarming and is about to get out of control,” said Dr. Francis Layoo Ocan, the group’s medical coordinator in Kosti.

Theft victim offers to share lottery win

Thieves used a stolen card to buy a winning French lottery ticket worth 500,000 euros ($523,000). But they vanished before cashing in.

The man whose card was stolen, identified in police documents as Jean-David E., is offering to split the cash with the lucky winners. He wants his wallet back, too.

Jean-David discovered earlier this month that his backpack had been stolen and asked his bank to block the card, and learned it had already been used by two apparently homeless men who bought the winning scratch-off lottery ticket.

Jean-David filed a police complaint about the theft, but is ready to withdraw it if the thieves come forward so that they can share the money, Debuisson said.

— From news services