She first entered a church during a visit to Türkiye. She remembers feeling a feeling of calm so crushing that she bought a small Bible. She wrapped him in her clothes and introduced him as a smuggling in her hometown, Isfahan, in the center of Iran.
The conversion of Artemis Ghasemzadeh of Islam to Christianity has evolved over a few years from 2019, through an Iranian network of underground churches and secret online courses. Three years ago, she was baptized and, in her words, “Reborn”.
The conversion was colossily risky. While Christians born in faith are free to practice, the laws of Sharia law of Iran declare that the abandonment of Islam for another religion is considered a blasphemy, punishable by death. Some members of his biblical study group were arrested.
Thus, in December, Ms. Ghasemzadeh left for the United States.
“I wanted to live freely, to live without fear, to live without someone wanting to kill me,” said Ghasemzadeh, 27, in a series of telephone interviews.
His trip landed in a migrant detention camp on the outskirts of the Darién jungle in Panama. She and nine other Iranian Christian converts, including three children, are among tens detainees at the Saint-Vincente camp. Their fate remains uncertain.
People fleeing violent religious persecution are normally eligible for asylum. But they were taken in the deportation thrust of the Trump administration while the president tries to make a campaign commitment to close the southern border.
“We don’t deserve this. We are in a place where we feel helpless, “said Ms. Ghasemzadeh. “I wait for our voices to be heard, that someone helps us.”
Panama, which is separately under pressure from the Trump administration on the control of the Panama Canal, has become a place of landing for migrants who would otherwise have langu in detention in the United States – or potentially released.
Panamani officials said that the UN agencies helped migrants return to their country or seek asylum in other countries, including Panama.
A dangerous conversion
Ms. Ghasemzadeh grew up in a middle -class family superior to Isfahan. Her father as a businessman was religiously conservative and strict with her and her three brothers and sisters. She didn’t tell him about her conversion.
Christianity called on it, she said, because its message seemed more peaceful and its less strict rules than the version of Islam that it had experienced in Iran.
The church applied extreme precautions to its underground rallies, said Ghasemzadeh. The parishioners received single passwords to connect to virtual meetings. Sermons and classes in person have been organized in different places. Ms. Ghasemzadeh said that she cherishes her Christian community. His older brother, Shahin, 32, also converted.
In 2022, an uprising led by women swept Iran, launched by the death of Mahsa Amini in detention of the police of morality on the allegations of violation of the Hijab rule. Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she had protested almost every day, singing “women, life, freedom”.
Like many women in Iran who have ceased to wear the hijab in an act of challenge, she left her long black hair to run in public. The government has sent its SMS, invoking it to a judge, she said. She did not arise. If he is found guilty of having violated the law of the hijab, women can be sentenced to a fine.
Travel to America
At the end of December, Ms. Ghasemzadeh and her brother Shahin left Iran, for the United States. She knew Mr. Trump’s promise to repress migrants, but said she thought he was only targeting criminals.
They went to Abu Dhabi, then to South Korea and arrived in Mexico City. There, they asked in a hotel and found a smuggler. He billed them each $ 3,000 and transported them to Tijuana.
There, near the border wall in the middle of the night, the smuggler pointed at a scale.
“Come on,” she recalls the smuggler, saying. “Mount the wall and go, quickly.”
When her feet hit the American soil, she melted into tears. “It’s over,” she said that she said to her brother. “We are finally there.”
The euphoria was short -lived. A few minutes later, the border agents surrounded them. They were transported to a detention center and separate. She has not seen or spoken to her brother since, she said. His mother told him that he was taken to an establishment in Texas, where he remains.
Ms. Ghasemzadeh said that she had said to the authorities several times that she was a converted Christian from Iran in search of asylum.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Security said that “not a single of these extraterrestrials has been afraid to return to their country of origin at any time during treatment or custody.” Ghasemzadeh said that she had never been interviewed about her asylum application.
“They kept saying now that it’s not time, tomorrow morning,” she said.
She was chained and put a military plane for Panama on February 12. The engine of the aircraft roared so hard that its ears rang. The turbulence made her nauseous.
It was his 27th birthday.
Deportee
Ms. Ghasemzadeh met nine other Iranians on the plane, all Christian converts, who have remarkably shared a similar story. The group has since developed.
For about a week, they were held inside a hotel under the watch of armed guards. The New York Times has been in daily contact with her since her arrival in Panama.
Ms. Ghasemzadeh, who very much likes Iranians of her generation is digital warned, Make a video describing their fate And shared it with Persian information channels outside Iran. He has become viral.
After she and others refused to sign documents that would open the way to their repatriation, they were put on buses and sent to the jungle camp.
Ali Herschi, Iranian-American lawyer for human rights in Washington, represents Iranians Pro Bono. Herschi said his priority was to prevent Panama from deporting them to Iran. Then, he said, “Attractive the American authorities to reverse the course and allow the group to return to the United States for humanitarian reasons.”
The jungle camp, said Ghasemzadeh, looks like a large fenced cage. The sleeping area was difficult and migrants had no blankets. They received a bottle of water and said to fill it with the bathroom tap, she said.
His arm was swollen and red with mosquito bites and one of the children in their group, Sam, 11, had fallen and injured his ankle. The medical staff told Iranian parents that the camp did not have a X-ray machine to determine if the bones were broken, she said.
Panama said migrants had everything they need.
Every night, Ms. Ghasemzadeh scribble Christian quotes a small notebook. On a page, she wrote to Jesus in Persian: “I am sure you can hear my voice up there. So please help. Next to it, she drew a little red heart.
