illegal immigration
Cartels, UN, and NGOs Fuel U.S. Border Crisis – A Report from Colombia

From the Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
A new Center for Immigration Studies video report uncovers one of the world’s most organized human smuggling operations. It operates out of a northwest Colombia village named Capurgana and is controlled by a paramilitary organization called the Gaitanist Self Defense Force of Colombia (a/k/a the Clan del Golfo), which controls the area with an iron fist.
Todd Bensman, the Center’s national security fellow, spent nearly two weeks investigating the human smuggling routes from Colombia to Panama’s Darien Gap. His trip included hours of travel by boat across the Uraba Gulf to a cartel-controlled landing site in Colombia. He also visited a UN run/cartel-controlled staging area, speaking with migrants and NGO staff and even members of the cartel.
The video highlights:
- Details about the Gaitanista Gulf Clan’s control of the smuggling routes.
- Information on the migrant population passing through the Darien Gap with the aid of the cartel and the NGOs – over two million migrants from over 150 nations, including hundreds on the terrorist watch list, in recent years.
- Who makes it all possible? Government officials, banks, NGOs, and the United Nations.
- Footage of migrants traveling through Colombia’s Capurgana village to the Darien Gap en route to the U.S.
- An assessment of President Mulino’s Darien Gap closure initiative.
Transcript: Cartels, UN, and NGOs Fuel U.S. Border Crisis
(0:10) You are seeing the most well-oiled industrialized human smuggling assembly line machine anywhere on the planet. It roars all day and night far beyond American awareness, in and all around this far northwest Colombia village named Capurgana.
(0:34) As far away as it is, this people-moving machine in far northwestern Colombia matters to the American public because it has mainlined nearly two million foreign nationals, like these, the last few years into American cities. But, also ones like these, including hundreds on the US terrorism watch list and criminal aliens among total strangers from 150 nations, like China.
Boatload by boatload. Across the Gulf of Uraba and into the famous Darien Gap migration chokepoint to Panama, and on to the US southern border.
(1:20) They arrive on buses and taxis in towns on one side of the Gulf, and then boat across to towns on the other side and head into the Darien Gap. A flow that carries suspected terrorists, like these Afghans Panama recently discovered and pulled off the trails on its side, or like this Somali terrorist a few years ago, and Chinese nationals and strangers from every nation adversarial to the United States.
(1:49) At issue is that none of this should be happening right now on the Gap’s Colombia side. But the machine is running just as strong today as it was before a new regional deal where Panama and Colombia are supposed to close the Darien Gap for the first time ever.
(2:10) On July 1, 2024, the new president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, with the supposed essential backing of the Biden-Harris White House and Colombia, launched an unprecedented new policy to choke off the Darien Gap, which, with any actual follow-through, would dramatically improve U.S. national and border security.
The plan relied heavily on Colombia’s partnership and a signed American agreement on July 1 to support that closure plan financially and diplomatically.
But, the Center for Immigration Studies went to Colombia to gauge how it was all working out and found, instead of closure on the Colombia side, a stunning reality.
(2:54) A tight-knit partnership between a paramilitary organization called the Gaitanist Self-Defense Force of Colombia – also known as the Clan del Golfo – that with an iron fist rules all that goes on in this region, and the Colombian government, banks, the United Nations, and a wide range of non-governmental migration advocacy groups.
Together, the legitimate and illegitimate run a vast, well-oiled human smuggling machine that pumps humanity to the American border, unimpeded, profitably – and wittingly – for all involved.
(3:34) It all starts with the Gaitanistas, the Clan del Golfo – so named for its control of the Uraba Gulf’s smuggling lanes to the Panamanian border and dozens of towns and villages that line the Gulf of Uraba.
In 2023, top U.S. law enforcement officials, announcing the extradition of a top Clan leader to New York State, described the paramilitary group as the most violent and powerful criminal organization in all of Colombia:
“…To commit brutal acts of violence, terror, and retaliation…to exert control over vast territorial regions of Colombia and its people…The CDC used military tactics and weapons to control the most lucrative cocaine trafficking region within Colombia…Its paramilitary organization’s thousands of soldiers, including sicarios or hitmen as they’re called, murdered, assaulted, kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated….”
(4:41) In Panama recently, the director general of the country’s National Border Service (SENAFRONT) explained to the Center that a major diplomatic push was underway to get Colombia on board with its Darien Gap closure plan, which includes going after the Gaitanista Gulf Clan.
Two months into the Panama shutdown plan, no impact was evident on the Colombia side. In fact, quite the opposite.
(5:08) The Center for Immigration Studies went to look and found the Gulf Clan so proud of its humming machine that it granted access to a clandestine boat dock and one of two camps in Acandi.
“This is a primary staging area for people that are heading into the Darien Gap into Panama. This is the dock, and behind me, you’re seeing immigrants that are actually loading right now as we speak on their way to the trailheads. The trailheads are probably still a good 20 or 30 miles from here. There is a process in place – a very organized process – because so many hundreds of thousands of people have come through here over the past few years to take advantage of Joe Biden’s policy of creating a super highway out of the Darien Gap. Very organized activity. You’ve got their equipment for traveling into the Gap, which has already arrived by an earlier boat. They’ll be matched with their tickets and… Okay, another boat has just come in.
“Just a non-stop assembly line. Very well organized. The town assembly has organized a conveyor belt assembly line, labor force. There’s also police who are overseeing this operation. We’re seeing welcome signs and migrant camps. Very well-oiled.”
(7:03) The Center found marital bliss between the Clan, the Colombian government, and even banks.
(7:20) With permitted access in Acandi, the Center toured a Gulf Clan-controlled migrant camp, though no filming was allowed inside. Operatives control access on the perimeter. So, who was allowed inside?
Colombian banks and Western Union providing money wiring services, nonprofit groups providing food, medicine, and all manner of assistance to immigrants arriving and departing for obvious trips into the nearby Darien Gap.
(8:07) At the Clan-controlled ferry boat docks in Necoclí and Turbo, where migrants board, Colombian federal migration officers check papers and let obvious immigrants board Clan-controlled ferries over to staging areas.
Municipal officials charge a toll tax on each and every migrant before they can board. All worked openly together for the common interest aim of moving mass volumes of totally obvious migrants that everyone involved well knows will illegally breach the next six nations and then the American border.
(8:58) In and around the UN and NGOs, Gulf cartel operatives charge immigrants as much as $300 per head cash for permission to buy a ferry ticket and cross the Gulf … then hundreds more for a guide once they arrive in towns like Capurganá and Acandi.
They tried to charge even me as my taxi entered the ferry boat terminal in Turbo, stopping the taxi, but then looking in through the window and determining that I was no immigrant and letting us through.
(9:51) Much in the way of U.S. national and homeland security is riding on Panama’s plan to close the Darien Gap. The Biden/Harris White House was supposed to help Panama pressure its ally Colombia to shut this down. Promised American money for deportation flights out of Panama hasn’t showed up, forcing Panama to keep its side of the border open still.
(10:15) But the Clan del Golfo, the United Nations, migrant help groups, the Colombian government – and thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants who will all end up living in America – are still on the machine.
All for one and one for all here in northwestern Colombia.
I’m Todd Bensman, Center for Immigration Studies in Colombia.
Related:
Panama Tribal Chiefs Swamped by Migrants Slam US, UN, NGOs
Panama Border Security Chief Says Many U.S.-Bound Terror Suspects Caught in Darien Gap Region
Biden-Harris open border is destroying an indigenous tribe’s land and way of life
Biden/Harris made empty promises to stop migrants in Panama — but the flood continues
COVID-19
5 Stories the Media Buried This Week

The Vigilant Fox
“What is likely to happen,” Fauci says, “is the emergence of another respiratory disease.”
“It may be another coronavirus, because we know that coronaviruses, really, mostly in bats, have the capability of binding to receptors that are in humans.”
“It could be another flu,” Fauci continued. “We’re dealing with H5N1 now, which is bird flu, which has taken the somewhat disturbing step of infecting mammals, namely cows and cats and other mammals, which means it’s adapting itself more to a human.”
“So my concern, Walter, is that whenever that happens, the next outbreak will be of a respiratory disease that’s easily transmissible, that has a significant degree of morbidity and mortality,” Fauci said.
When asked if the cuts at HHS and “our attitude towards science” are making the situation “a little bit more dangerous,” Fauci replied, “Oh, absolutely!”
VIDEO: @TheChiefNerd
#4 – Dr. Oz drops bombshells on the massive waste, fraud, and abuse bleeding Medicare and Medicaid.
Oz explained that people are unknowingly signed up for coverage, illegal schemes are funneling taxpayer dollars to those who aren’t eligible, and the same patient can be billed in multiple states with no federal oversight catching it.
It also turns out that 230,000 Americans were enrolled in Obamacare plans without even knowing it.
His reaction at the end of this clip says it all.
VIDEO: @McCulloughFund
While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to get this top 10 list emailed to you each week.
#2 – Jenny McCarty reveals chilling encounter after speaking out on vaccine issue.
• After going public about her son’s autism and the vaccine link, Jenny McCarthy received a private visit from a man with a warning.
• He claimed to work for a top-level PR firm and said he was approached by a government agency.
• His job? To create a campaign to discredit her and label her “anti-vaccine.”
• He said he turned down the offer—because his own child had gone through the same thing.
•The man warned her that they would find someone else to do it and use the media to come after her hard.
• McCarthy was stunned and asked him to repeat everything—she said she had chills all over her body.
• When she asked why they’d attack her despite her not being anti-vaccine, he replied, “Doesn’t matter.”
• According to him, they had the media on their side and would do whatever it took to bury her message.
“We gave $13 to $15 billion a year to human traffickers. That’s what this system did,” Antonio Gracias lamented.
Gracias’ team combed through voter rolls in four states and uncovered thousands of non-citizens not only registered to vote, but in many cases, actually voted.
“We looked at the voter rolls in four states, and we found thousands of these people [non-citizens] on the voter rolls, and we found many of those people had voted. In one state in particular, well over a thousand voted.”
His conclusion?
“I think this [Biden’s border policy] was a move to import voters.”
VIDEO: @KanekoaTheGreat
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illegal immigration
Court attempts to halt Trump deportations, El Salvador president says ‘too late’

From The Center Square
By
A class action lawsuit was filed on Saturday against the Trump administration after President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking the Enemy Aliens Act to target, arrest and remove violent Venezuelan prison gang members, Tren de Aragua (TdA), from the U.S.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation on behalf of five Venezuelans illegally in the country who were detained in Texas and New York. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
On Saturday, nearly 300 violent illegal foreign nationals were removed from the U.S. and arrived in El Salvador with the cooperation of El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele after reaching an agreement with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“The first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country,” Bukele said in a post on X. “They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable).”
El Salvador also received 23 MS-13 gang members from the U.S. who were wanted by Salvadoran authorities, Bukele said. They include two ringleaders, one of whom “is a member of the criminal organization’s highest structure.” Those sent to El Salvador by the U.S. will help Bukele’s government “finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators and sponsors.
“As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organized crime. But this time, we are also helping our allies, making our prison system self-sustainable, and obtaining vital intelligence to make our country an even safer place. All in a single action. May God bless El Salvador, and may God bless the United States,” he said.
The U.S. government is paying a small fee to detain them, Bukele said, and the prison is also making money because it requires inmates to work. These additional inmates, “combined with the production already being generated by more than 40,000 inmates engaged in various workshops and labor under the Zero Idleness program, will help make our prison system self-sustainable,” he said, noting that it costs $200 million a year to maintain.
In response, Rubio thanked Bukele saying, “El Salvador has agreed to hold the violent criminals “in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars. President Nayib Bukele is not only the strongest security leader in our region, he’s also a great friend of the U.S.”
In an emergency hearing held on Saturday, a federal judge ruled that deportations of violent Venezuelans be temporarily halted and those who were illegally in the country and already removed be returned. The ACLU said the order blocked the administration “from deporting anyone under the Alien Enemies Act while the case proceeds. Flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants the DHS attempted to deport have been ordered to turn around and return to the U.S.”
A U.S. federal judge has no jurisdiction over foreign governments.
In response, Bukele posted on X, “Oopsie … Too late,” with a laughing emoji.
Bukele also posted videos and pictures of them arriving in El Salvador in handcuffs. The video shows them being met by El Salvadoran military wearing riot gear and transported in armored vehicles to CECOT. The videos depict El Salvadoran officials lifting up their shirts to show tattoos of gang member affiliation, officials shaving the heads of kneeling inmates and their admittance as CECOT inmates.
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable).
The United States will pay a very low fee for them,… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpD6
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
Cooperation between the U.S. and El Salvador expanded under Trump and Rubio, representing a reversal of Biden administration policy that used taxpayer money and planes to transport illegal foreign nationals into the U.S.
Trump has been aggressively targeting of TdA after a record more than 1 million Venezuelans illegally entered the U.S. under the Biden administration, including TdA members expanding operations in at least 22 states, The Center Square first reported.
Under the Trump administration, Venezuelan repatriation flights also began, paid for by the Venezuelan government, negotiated by the Trump administration, The Center Square reported.
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