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
Daily Caller
DOJ Releases Dossier Of Deported Maryland Man’s Alleged MS-13 Gang Ties

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Katelynn Richardson
The Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents Wednesday demonstrating Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s membership in the MS-13 gang.
Abrego Garcia’s police interview, immigration court rulings and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deportable/inadmissible alien record highlighting his membership in the gang, which he has disputed in court, are included in the release.
In a December 2019 decision, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Abrego Garcia’s challenge to an immigration judge’s factual finding that he is “a verified member of MS-13.”
The board found the immigration judge “appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation against the respondent in determining that he has not demonstrated that he is not a danger to property or persons.”
Officers found Abrego Garcia loitering in a Home Depot parking lot on March 28, 2019, wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations,” the initial Prince George’s County Police Department Gang Field Interview Sheet states.
“Wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents that they are a member in good standing with the MS-13,” the document states. “Officers contacted a past proven and reliable source of information, who advised Kilmar Armando ABREGO-GARCIA is an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique. The confidential source further advised that he is the rank of ‘Chequeo’ with the moniker of ‘Chele.’”
The administration became embroiled in a legal dispute after Abrego Garcia, who entered the country illegally in 2011, was deported in March to El Salvador as a result of an error. In court records, they argued Abrego Garcia could not “relitigate the finding that he is a danger to the community.”
A lower court ordered his return, but the Supreme Court required it to clarify the order and directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) indicated Wednesday that it would appeal the amended order Judge Paula Xinis issued which directed the government to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.”
During a Monday meeting with President Donald Trump, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he would not “smuggle” a terrorist into the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also released court filings Wednesday showing Abrego Garcia’s wife requested a domestic violence restraining order against him.
illegal immigration
Despite court rulings, the Trump Administration shows no interest in helping Abrego Garcia return to the U.S.

By Greg Collard
With research assistance from James Rushmore
Timeline: The Case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia
With President Trump sitting next to him, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that no, he is not going to release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from his country’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), despite a Justice Department lawyer admitting in a court filing that Abrego Garcia’s deportation last month was an “administrative error.”
No matter, Bukele said when asked if would return him to the U.S.:
Bukele: Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States. I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.
Reporter: But you could release him inside El Salvador.
Bukele: Yeah, but I’m not releasing, I mean I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western hemisphere, and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.
Not that there was any doubt what Bukele would say. Attorney General Pam Bondi set the tone early on in the meeting. She explained what the Supreme Court meant last week when it said a lower court ruling “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.”
The Supreme Court ruled, president, that if El Salvador wants to return him … we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.
It brings to mind President Clinton’s infamous grand jury testimony when he said: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Abrego-Garcia left El Salvador and illegally entered the U.S. in 2011. His status as an illegal immigrant changed after he was arrested in 2019 and the Department of Homeland Security accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia fought the accusation and applied for asylum. Instead, an immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal” status.
A federal judge wrote in an April 6 opinion that in El Salvador “the Barrio 18 gang had been targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”
The Justice Department argues its hands are tied. It doesn’t matter that the U.S. is paying El Salvador $6 million a year to house U.S. deportees at CECOT.
“The United States does not have control over Abrego Garcia. Or the sovereign nation of El Salvador,” says one court filing.
Below is a timeline of the case since Abrego Garcia was arrested last month, leading up to Monday’s Oval Office meeting with Bukele.
March 12-15, 2025
ICE agents stop Abrego Garcia and tell him that he is no longer under “withholding of removal” status. The Trump administration says he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the president has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Abrego Garcia, who denies he is part of MS-13, is sent to an ICE detention facility in La Villa, Texas, and from there he is deported to El Salvador on March 15 along with 260 others, primarily Venezuelan nationals. He is being held in CECOT, a prison that has a capacity of 40,000 inmates.
March 24, 2025
Abrego Garcia and his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, file a lawsuit that notes Abrego Garcia has been in the U.S. legally since 2019 under withholding of removal status, and that the designation was never lifted.
They also accuse the government of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite “knowing that he would be immediately incarcerated and tortured in that country’s most notorious prison; indeed, Defendants have paid the government of El Salvador millions of dollars to do exactly that. Such conduct shocks the conscience and cries out for immediate judicial relief.”
The lawsuit requests the court order the U.S. government to tell the government of El Salvador to release and deliver Abrego Garcia to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.
March 31, 2025
The Justice Department acknowledges in a court filing that “although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.”
Still, the Justice Department argues the motion should be denied because the court “has no power” over El Salvador. Justice Department attorneys argue:
Under their (plaintiffs) logic, this Court may assume jurisdiction to decide whether the order is legal, but if the order were determined legal, then jurisdiction would disappear again.
The government also says there’s no proof that Abrego Garcia will be tortured or killed in CECOT:
Plaintiffs point to little evidence about conditions in CECOT itself (focusing primarily on its capacity for detainees), instead extrapolating from allegations about conditions in different Salvadoran prisons. While there may be allegations of abuses in other Salvadoran prisons—very few in relation to the large number of detainees—there is no clear showing that Abrego Garcia himself is likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT. More fundamentally, this Court should defer to the government’s determination that Abrego Garcia will not likely be tortured or killed in El Salvador.
April 4, 2025
U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis orders the Trump Administration to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m., April 7. She writes:
Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits because Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador In violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act…and without any legal process; his continued presence in El Salvador, for obvious reasons, constitutes irreparable harm; the balance of equities and the public interest weigh in favor of returning him to the United States; and issuance of a preliminary injunction without further delay is necessary to restore him to the status quo and to avoid ongoing irreparable harm resulting from Abrego Garcia’s unlawful removal.
April 5, 2025
The Justice Department appeals the order, calling it “indefensible” that “a federal district judge ordered the United States to force El Salvador to send one of its citizens—a member of MS-13, no less—back to the United States by midnight on Monday. If there was ever a case for an emergency stay pending appeal, this would be it.”
More from the appellate motion:
Foremost, [the order] commands Defendants to do something they have no independent authority to do: Make El Salvador release Abrego Garcia, and send him to America. That is why Plaintiffs did not even ask the district court for an order directing Abrego Garcia’s return. As Plaintiffs themselves acknowledged, a federal court “has no jurisdiction over the Government of El Salvador and cannot force that sovereign nation to release Plaintiff Abrego Garcia from its prison.” That concession is all that is needed to order a stay here. No federal court has the power to command the Executive to engage in a certain act of foreign relations; that is the exclusive prerogative of Article II, immune from superintendence by Article III.
April 6, 2025
Judge Xinis issues a follow-up memorandum opinion to her April 4 order:
Although the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal. Nor does any evidence suggest that Abrego Garcia is being held in CECOT at the behest of Salvadoran authorities to answer for crimes in that country. Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.
The judge also writes that in 2019, Homeland Security “relied principally on a singular unsubstantiated allegation that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13.”
April 7, 2025
A three-judge panel of Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously denies the government’s motion for a stay of Xinis’ order that say Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. Judge Stephanie Thacker writes:
The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.
The Trump Administration appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts grants an administrative stay to give justices time to consider the case.
Following the stay, Bondi accuses Abrego Garcia of being a “violent gang member”:
We will continue to fight for the safety of Americans and get these people out of our country to make America safe.
April 10, 2025
The Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration but directs Judge Xinis to “clarify” a portion of her ruling. From the Supreme Court’s decision:
The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.
April 11, 2025
If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court.
President Trump says that aboard Air Force One a day after the Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling and says the government should “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
Meanwhile, Judge Xinis issues a new order that directs the government to “take all available steps to facilitate the return” of Abrego Garcia. In a hearing, she also makes clear her frustration with the Justice Department.
“The record, as it stands, is, despite this court’s clear directive, your clients have done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia,” she says.
Xinis also orders the administration to provide daily updates on the status of Abrego Garcia’s return. She also criticizes Justice Department attorneys in her order:
During the hearing, the Court posed straightforward questions, including: Where is Abrego Garcia right now? What steps had Defendants taken to facilitate his return while the Court’s initial order on injunctive relief was in effect…? Defendants’ counsel responded that he could not answer these questions, and at times suggested that Defendants had withheld such information from him. As a result, counsel could not confirm, and thus did not advance any evidence, that Defendants had done anything to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. This remained Defendants’ position even after this Court reminded them that the Supreme Court of the United States expressly affirmed this Court’s authority to require the Government “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. From this Court’s perspective, Defendants’ contention that they could not answer these basic questions absent some nonspecific “vetting” that has yet to take place, provides no basis for their lack of compliance.
April 12, 2025
A State Department official reports to the court that Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” at CECOT. “He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” the State Department’s Michael Kozak says in a filing.
However, he does not give an update on the status of Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
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