In the first four months of 2023, more than 55,000 Venezuelan migrants traveling to the United States arrived in Panama after crossing the Darien jungle, according to official figures obtained by the EFE news agency.
Panama takes the biometric data of these travelers and offers them health care and food at stations located both in the province of Darién and in the province of Chiriquí, on the border with Costa Rica, where more than a dozen international organizations are present. according to official information.
Thus, between January 1 and April 30, a total of 127,687 people in mobility arrived in the province of Darién, with Venezuelans being the largest with 55,589, followed by Haiti (28,610), Ecuador (16,992), Colombia (3,836) and India (2,791), according to statistics from the National Migration Service (SNM) of Panama.
The figure for the first four-month period of 2023 is six times that of the 19,925 registered in the same period of 2022, when the year closed with a total of 248,284 people on the move who crossed the jungle on their journey to North America, an unprecedented figure that left behind the historic of 2021 (133,726).
April was the month with the most arrivals so far this year with 40,297, well above the 24,634 and 24,657 in January and February, respectively, and the 38,099 in March.
Of the 1,427 people who arrived at Darién immigration stations on April 30, 304 or 21% were minors.
“If migration continues as it has been up to now, we will have a number that doubles the previous one,” of more than 248,000 migrants crossing the Darién in 2022, Panamanian Foreign Minister Janaina Tewaney Mencomo said on April 24, when asking the countries of the region “concrete actions” to tackle the crisis.
The United States announced on April 27 a battery of measures with the intention of reducing the migratory flow towards its border with Mexico as of May 11, when Title 42, an immigration regulation that allows hot expulsions, is suspended.
As of that date, more restrictive measures will begin to take effect at the southern border: people who are arrested crossing irregularly may be subject to a 5-year ban from entering the US and from requesting asylum, according to the Department. Homeland Security (DHS).
The UN Refugee Agency (Acnur) launched on Monday on the social networks Facebook and TikTok the “Trust in El Toucan” project, with which it intends to combat false information about the Darién jungle and its use as a route irregular migration.
“At least 38% of the people who arrive in Darién are informed through Facebook and almost 10% through TikTok,” said the UNHCR Office for Belize, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua and the South Caribbean, located in the Panamanian capital.
It is not known for sure how many die in the Darién, where travelers face the wild environment and also criminal groups that commit assaults and rapes. The figures from the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project speak of 221 since 2014, 14 of them this year, but the underreporting is enormous, as the international organization itself admits.
2023-05-03 00:01:44
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