{"id":31491,"date":"2021-06-08T11:13:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T16:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=31491"},"modified":"2021-06-09T10:24:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T15:24:29","slug":"congressman-journalists-historic-surge-extra-continental-immigrants-now-pouring-panama-us-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/congressman-journalists-historic-surge-extra-continental-immigrants-now-pouring-panama-us-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Congressman, Journalists: Historic Surge of \u2018Extra-Continental\u2019 Immigrants Now Pouring Through Panama to US Border"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Todd Bensman\u00a0as published June 2, 2021\u00a0<\/a>by the Center for Immigration Studies<\/p>\n

A record 10,000 so-called \u2018extra-continental<\/a>\u2019 migrants from around the world poured through the notoriously untamed Darian Gap jungle passage between Colombia and Panama, bound for the American border, during just in the single month of May, according to two journalists and a US congressman who recently returned from the region. Amid the flood of humanity are many\u00a0special interest aliens<\/a>\u00a0from nations of US intelligence community concern for terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe numbers are the highest ever this month. They have dramatically, dramatically, dramatically increased,\u201d independent journalist\u00a0Michael Yon<\/a>\u00a0told CIS in a telephone interview from Panama, where he has been reporting for several months. \u201cIt\u2019s up 300, 400 percent. Be prepared. They\u2019re coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, the Center for Immigration Studies\u00a0predicted the surge in extra-continental immigration<\/a>\u00a0once President Joe Biden entered office with plans to implement the law enforcement-free, ad hoc immigration leniency policies he had promised during the 2020 campaign, what I termed \u201cclarion calls of welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That influx\u00a0became evident by February<\/a>\u00a0and March, as CIS reported. But the numbers have now ballooned to previously unrecorded rates, said Yon, who has been reporting on both the Panama and Colombian sides of the Darien Gap for several months alongside American journalist\u00a0Chuck Holton<\/a>, who lives in Panama. The two journalists recently escorted Wisconsin\u00a0Congressman Tom Tiffany<\/a>\u00a0and another Republican congressman (who did not want to be named yet) to where the Darien Gap trail ends in Embera Indian villages to observe the US-bound influx first-hand.<\/p>\n

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Rep. Tom Tiffany<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Tiffany, who spent four days on the ground at his own expense and in an unofficial capacity, said he came away from the experience alarmed at the national security consequences posed by high numbers of such strangers driving through Panama at a moment when the US border is \u201coverrun\u201d and vulnerable. He said the trip confirmed what he heard during a recent congressional foray to the southern border from a ranking Border Patrol official that terrorist suspects fairly routinely cross it from a smuggling pipeline that runs through Panama.<\/p>\n

At one trip up a Panamanian river on the route, Tiffany counted 16 large boats filled to capacity with immigrants of all different nationalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat gives you pause is that each country\u2019s security people \u2013 whether its Border Patrol in the US, or SENAFRONT down in Panama \u2013 they just cannot handle the crush. It\u2019s so easy at this point for someone who has ill intentions for America, who wants to commit a terrorist act, to meld in with these migrants traveling through, to get into America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many coming. We have no idea who they are. It\u2019s easy for the bad guys right now to get into our country because the system is overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pregnant women and families in abundance propelled by Joe Biden election<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Pregnant migrant woman just off the trail in Dairen Province, Panama. Photo by Michael Yon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

For context, anywhere from\u00a08,000<\/a>\u00a0to as high as\u00a020,000 immigrants<\/a>\u00a0may cross through the gap in normal calendar years past. But the International Organization for Migration in April\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that 11,370 extra-continental migrants reached Panama between just January and April. May alone is going to come in at a minimum of 10,000 with the bulk of the year still to come, said Yon, who bases his estimate on flow rates into certain indigenous villages, interviews with Panamanian police, and non-government organizations that have arrived to help the migrants.<\/p>\n

The flood has so severely strained Panama\u2019s ability to manage it that the country\u00a0on May 20 ordered a closure<\/a>\u00a0of its 165-mile wilderness border with Colombia. But as smugglers and immigrants well know, the order cannot be enforced since it involves ungoverned wilderness, not while all of the contiguous countries leading to it \u2013 Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru \u2013 remain open.<\/p>\n

A majority of the Immigrants driving toward the US southern border, where they will soon exploit management systems staggering under an historic crush of illegally entering immigrants from Central America and Mexico, originally hail from Haiti, Cuba and sub-Saharan Africa, Yon and Holton said.<\/p>\n

A great many of those are families with children and \u2013 especially notable to Yon \u2013 late-stage pregnant women who feel induced to attempt the often deadly journey upon learning \u201csomewhere along the information chain\u201d that Biden\u2019s administration is quickly legalizing those immigrant demographics in large numbers, Yon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re getting that information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Said Holton: \u201cWe are told that these women are intentionally getting pregnant in order to get into the United States. We saw a lot of pregnant women. I was pretty astounded. I even asked, \u2018what are you even\u00a0thinking,<\/em>\u00a0coming through this jungle pregnant. And they\u2019re saying like, \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2026\u2019 They don\u2019t see it as irresponsible. It\u2019s just what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those who survived the Biden-induced trek, independently in separate interviews, described to Yon and Holton the bodies they saw all along the trail.<\/p>\n

To Rep. Tiffany, all blame for the bodies and suffering of many more women and children than in pre-Biden days fall on his shoulders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hearing of children floating down the river after not being able to survive,\u201d Tiffany said. \u201cYou hear of children who leave the gap with their parents dead behind them. We heard those stories consistently. We took pictures of people being carried in to the medical facility. This is all happening because of the green light that came in January 20,\u201d the Biden inauguration.<\/p>\n

The administration denies its policies are propelling mortal journeys or the mass-migration crisis, which government statistics indicate sharply escalated after Biden took office.<\/p>\n

Most who will claim US asylum already lived in protected peace and prosperity<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Chuck Holton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Almost all of these extra-continental migrants will apply for political protection under US asylum laws to prevent deportations to home countries where they say political persecution awaits them. But Chuck Holton and Michael Yon noted that virtually every immigrant they interviewed already had lived and worked in protected status for years \u2013 in the initial South American nations where they first arrived in the hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Many coming off the trail in Panama were well equipped, carried late-model cell phones, and easily replenished their money reserves by wire from family and friends still in South America.<\/p>\n

Of the several hundred immigrants Holton said he and Yon have interviewed who likely will claim US political protection from deportation to home countries, they found only a single one had actually come recently from an objectionable home country.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the rest have been living in Chile, Ecuador, and Brazil for three or four years. That shows that they knew there was no use in trying to make into the United States for four years under Trump until a new president got in and they could head north,\u201d Holton told CIS (see video<\/a>\u00a0of Holton interviewing immigrants). \u201cThose people started to slow down and stop because of covid and Donald Trump, and now that covid is lifting and Trump is gone, they\u2019re making a mad rush for it because they\u2019ve got to get in while the getting is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two men the journalists encountered, for instance, were Egyptians who\u2019d been living for years already in South Korea, obviously prosperous, well-educated, and certainly in no need of the US asylum they will almost certainly claim at the border.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason they would ever think to walk through the Darien Gap is there is no other way to get north without a visa,\u201d Holton said.<\/p>\n

The national security threat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yon and Holton said they encountered military-aged single men from Islamic terrorism-plagued countries besides Egypt, including Yemen, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

My book,\u00a0America\u2019s Covert Border War, the Untold Story of the Nation\u2019s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration<\/a><\/em>, details instances when American authorities stationed in Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico had found and detained terrorist suspects from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and other countries as they migrated through from the Darien Gap. One Somali, for instance, went on to cross the California border and eventually conduct a double-vehicle ramming attack in Edmonton, Alberta while carrying an ISIS flag.<\/p>\n

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Another Somali was caught in Costa Rica and deported. Six Pakistani suspected al-Qaeda terrorists were detained in Panama, which in recent years had processed 49 terror alerts regarding migrants passing through, the book explains. Mexico announced in 2020 that it had caught and deported 19 terror suspects.<\/p>\n

This year,\u00a0as CIS detailed<\/a>, two Yemenis were caught near Calexico, California after separate illegal border crossings were found to have been on the FBI\u2019s terrorist watch list, not an unusual occurrence. One of the Yemeni migrants also was on the No Fly List and was found to have been hiding a cell phone sim card inside the sole of a shoe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did interdict and find some,\u201d Tiffany said. \u201cBut how many have they not found\u201d?<\/p>\n

What especially galled him was watching \u201cbus after bus after bus come streaming out of the Darien Gap and taking the Pan American Highway\u201d to the US southern border filled with strangers of unknown repute.<\/p>\n

He was referring to a policy known as \u201ccontrolled flow<\/a>,\u201d by which the governments of Panama and Costa Rica typically provide shelter, medical treatment and buses that move migrants coming out of the gap into Nicaragua. That number is at least 300 a day now, Tiffany, Yon and Holton estimate.<\/p>\n

Tiffany said he believes the American public has no idea that any of this poses higher than usual risks given the collapsing US border control systems at the moment, and so he plans to speak out about what he learned on his Panama trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Panamanian people are doing the best they can; They just pass them through. We can\u2019t blame them for that,\u201d Tiffany said. \u201cIt\u2019s American actions that cause this. The American public needs to know about this\u2026 that the public policy choices that are made can have dire consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

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