More than 82,000 migrants have crossed the dangerous Darién jungle, the natural border between Panama and Colombia, so far this year, mostly Venezuelans, followed by Ecuadorians, as reported this Saturday by Panamanian immigration authorities.
«More than 82,000 people have already crossed through the Darién jungle. They continue to be prominently Venezuelans,” said the director of the National Immigration Service, Samira Gozaine, in a video message.
In total, so far this year, 82,360 migrants have crossed the Darién, according to data from Panamanian authorities, who register them upon their arrival at the first indigenous communities at the exit of the jungle.
These data collide with the 49,291 registered between January and February of last year, or the 87,390 at the end of March. The increase has been progressive since 2021, reaching the record number of more than 520,000 in 2023, double that of the previous year.
From these indigenous communities, migrants are transported by the river in canoes to government shelters, such as those in Lajas Blancas or San Vicente, in Darién itself.
It is precisely in San Vicente where a week ago a dispute between migrants triggered an altercation and the fire of part of the center’s infrastructure, generating losses of more than 400,000 dollars, according to the official estimate.
A total of 45 migrants involved in the riots were arrested and are already serving sentences in Panama prisons.
In these shelters, migrants take buses managed by the Panamanian authorities, who have to finance themselves, to Costa Rica, so they can continue on their way to North America. This same Friday, according to the director of Immigration, they transported 2,600 people to the neighboring country.
Of them, he explained, “almost 2,100 were Venezuelans”, followed by Ecuadorians, then the Chinese, among whom there is “an increase”, in addition to Colombians and Haitians. Among those who arrived with criminal records, the majority are “gang members,” he noted.
“In this same period (January-March) 7 migrants wanted for crimes have been detected, through biometric alerts,” Gozaine stressed.
The director of the border security forces known as the National Border Service (Senafront), Jorge Gobea, detailed in another video message published on social networks that the last few months have been very intense due to the “bad weather in the Caribbean sector.” , an alternative “VIP” route by sea to avoid the jungle, in which several deaths occurred due to shipwrecks.
«We maintain a staff that continues patrolling the trails, the corridors, the beaches, mainly the Caribbean-Pacific sector, to prevent Panamanians and foreigners from engaging in human trafficking and harming these people who come in transit and who try to find a better life,” he said.
Thus, he stressed, “it is the responsibility (…) to first provide them security, second to identify all the criminal networks that seek to profit from this scourge,” since “each migrant who enters Panama illegally feeds organized crime, and it is something “that we want to separate in Panamanian society.”
The Government of Panama insists that migration through the Darién is a “business” of organized crime for profit, and last year, according to figures from the Ministry of Security of Panama, some 820 million dollars were earned from the transfer of migrants through this jungle. EFE
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