She first entered a church on a visit to Turkey. She remembers feeling a sense of calm so overpowering that she purchased a small Bible. She wrapped it in her clothes and smuggled it back to her hometown, Isfahan, in central Iran.
Artemis Ghasemzadeh’s conversion from Islam to Christianity evolved over a few years starting in 2019, through an Iranian network of underground churches and secret online classes. Three years ago, she was baptized and, in her words, “reborn.”
Converting was colossally risky. While Christians born into the faith are free to practice, Iran’s Shariah laws state that abandoning Islam for another religion is considered blasphemy, punishable by death. Some members of her Bible-study group were arrested.
So in December, Ms. Ghasemzadeh set out for the United States.
“I wanted to live freely, to live without fear, to live without someone wanting to kill me,” Ms. Ghasemzadeh, 27, said in a series of phone interviews.
Her journey has landed her in a migrant detention camp on the outskirts of the Darién jungle in Panama. She and nine other Iranian Christian converts, three of them children, are among dozens detained at the Saint Vincente camp. Their fate remains uncertain.
People fleeing violent religious persecution are normally eligible for asylum. But they have been caught in the Trump administration’s deportation push as the president tries to fulfill a campaign pledge to close the southern border.
“We don’t deserve this. We are in a place where we feel helpless,” Ms. Ghasemzadeh said. “I am waiting for our voices to be heard, for someone to help us.”
Panama, which is separately under pressure from the Trump administration over control of the Panama Canal, has become a landing place for migrants who otherwise would have languished in detention in the United States — or potentially been released.
Panamanian officials have said that United Nations agencies are helping the migrants return to their countries or seek asylum in other nations, including Panama.
A Dangerous Conversion
Ms. Ghasemzadeh grew up in an upper-middle class family in Isfahan. Her businessman father was religiously conservative and strict with her and her three siblings. She did not tell him about her conversion.
Christianity appealed to her, she said, because its message sounded more peaceful and its rules less stringent than the version of Islam she had experienced in Iran.
The church applied extreme precautions to its underground gatherings, Ms. Ghasemzadeh said. Parishioners received one-time passwords to log into virtual meetings. In-person sermons and classes were hosted at different locations. Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she cherished her Christian community. Her older brother, Shahin, 32, also converted.
In 2022, a women-led uprising swept across Iran, set off by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police on allegations of violating the hijab rule. Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she protested nearly every day, chanting, “Women, Life, Freedom.”
Like many women in Iran who have stopped wearing the hijab in an act of defiance, she let her long, dark hair flow in public. The government sent her text messages, summoning her before a judge, she said. She did not show up. If convicted of violating the hijab law, women can be fined.
Journey to America
In late December, Ms. Ghasemzadeh and her brother Shahin departed Iran, bound for the United States. She knew about Mr. Trump’s promise to crack down on migrants but said she believed that he was targeting only criminals.
They went to Abu Dhabi, then South Korea and arrived in Mexico City. There, they asked around at a hotel and found a smuggler. He charged them each $3,000 and ferried them to Tijuana.
There, near the border wall in the middle of the night, the smuggler pointed to a ladder.
“Go,” she remembers the smuggler saying. “Climb the wall and go, quick.”
When her feet touched American soil, she burst into tears. “It’s over,” she said she told her brother. “We are finally here.”
The euphoria was short-lived. Minutes later, border agents surrounded them. They were transported to a detention facility and separated. She has not seen nor spoken to her brother since, she said. Her mother told her that he was taken to a facility in Texas, where he remains.
Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she repeatedly told the authorities that she was a Christian convert from Iran seeking asylum.
A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said that “not a single one of these aliens asserted fear of returning to their home country at any point during processing or custody.” Ms. Ghasemzadeh said that she was never interviewed about her asylum claim.
“They kept saying now is not the time, tomorrow morning,” she said.
She was shackled and put on a military plane to Panama on Feb. 12. The plane’s engine roared so loudly that her ears rang. The turbulence made her nauseous.
It was her 27th birthday.
Deported
Ms. Ghasemzadeh met nine other Iranians on the plane, all Christian converts, who remarkably shared a similar story. The group has since banded together.
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 she arrived in Panama.
Ms. Ghasemzadeh, who, like many Iranians of her generation, is digitally savvy, made a video describing their plight and shared it with Persian news channels outside Iran. It went viral.
After she and others refused to sign documents that would pave the way for their repatriation, they were put on buses and sent to the jungle camp.
Ali Herschi, an Iranian-American human rights lawyer in Washington, represents the Iranians pro bono. Mr. Herschi said his priority was to stop Panama from deporting them to Iran. Then, he said, “appealing with American authorities to reverse course and allow the group re-entry to the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.”
The jungle camp, Ms. Ghasemzadeh said, looks like a large fenced cage. The sleeping area was muggy and the migrants did not have blankets. They were given one bottle of water and told to refill it from the bathroom faucet, she said.
Her arm was swollen and red from mosquito bites, and one of the children in their group, Sam, 11, had fallen and injured his ankle. Medical staff told the Iranian parents the camp did not have an X-ray machine to determine if bones were broken, she said.
Panama has said the migrants have everything they need.
Every night Ms. Ghasemzadeh scribbles Christian quotes in a small notebook. On one page, she wrote to Jesus in Persian: “I am certain you can hear my voice from up there. So please help.” Next to it she drew a tiny red heart.
