The inhospitable Darién jungle, on the border between Colombia and Panama, no longer serves as a corridor for migrants looking for the American dream, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said on Thursday.
The flow of migrants passing through this jungle has fallen to tiny levels due to the fear of the massive deportations ordered by the government of Republican Donald Trump, after serving as a route in the past three years to a million walkers who were going to the United States.
“We closed an operation that began in 2016,” when migration in the Darién increased notorily, Mulino said at a press conference. “Today in March we reached 112 (migrants who crossed the Darién), it is a very important decrease,” he added.
The Panamanian government and UN agencies set up posts to assist migrants in this 266 km long jungle and 575,000 hectares of surface, where mostly Venezuelans crossed, and many of them children and the elderly.
Due to the reduced flow of migrants, Panama began to disarm the assistance camps.
Now “comes the other flow, the one that comes from the north, which begins to rise,” said Mulino in reference to the immigrants who, after ruling out going to the United States for fear of deportations, return from Mexico and other Central American nations heading to South America.
These migrants, however, do not have to cross the jungle to reach Colombia, but they travel in boats that they hire in small Caribbean ports in Panama.
“We will not allow more migrants in that area of Darién,” warned Mulino, who during the 2024 electoral campaign had promised to “close” this migratory route.
Panama agreed to serve as a “bround” for migrants deported by the United States, as did Guatemala and Costa Rica.
In February, 299 deportees arrived in Panama, mostly Asian, and those who did not agree to be repatriated were temporarily sent to a shelter in the province of Darién.
After criticism from human rights groups that the shelter was a “detention center,” the government authorized 112 migrants to go out to manage visas for other countries.
On the weekend 65 of them arrived in Panama City, where they have three months to get a country that will hold them. If they have not left within that period, “they will be expelled or deported,” according to the government.
Several have said that they do not want to return to their countries of origin because they are in danger and that they have no money left.