"Troubling": Panama Agrees to Anti-Migrant Collaboration After Trump Threatens to Retake Canal

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is visiting Latin America on his first foreign trip in his new post. One of his stops is Panama, where President Trump has threatened to invade and take over control of the critical trade route of the Panama Canal in response to its growing ties to China. It is a deeply unpopular proposition in Panama, seen as a reversion to the mid-20th century imperial encroachment that Panama so intentionally confronted over the course of the Canal transition." It is also, on a logistical level," essentially impossible," according to Panama City-based scholar Miriam Pensack. In what Pensack calls a troubling" development, Panama has announced it will more closely cooperate with Trump's policing of migration from Central America to the United States as a diplomatic concession to his threats.