illegal immigration
Panama’s Incoming President Wants To Shut Down His Country’s Most Treacherous Route For Migrants — But Will It Work?
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Panama’s new president-elect is pledging to close a key corridor used by hundreds of thousands of migrants en route to the U.S., but experts and Panamanians aren’t so sure it can be done.
President-elect Jose Raul Mulino handily won the Panamanian presidential election earlier in May, riding a wave of voter discontent over the country’s slow economic growth and an endorsement from a popular former president. The 64-year-old lawyer also campaigned on a pledge to end the illegal immigration that runs through the tiny Central American nation’s Darien gap — but some question the feasibility of that pledge, given the vastness of the jungle, the cartels that populate it and the sheer amount of migrants flowing through it.
“While President Mulino’s promise to close the Darien Gap to migrants appears to be made in good faith, it’s unclear how he could ever actually deliver,” Matt O’Brien, director of investigations for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The region consists of thousands of square miles of jungle that are virtually impossible to police.”
“And the gap itself is already home to massive migrant assistance operations that are funded by politically-potent, anti-borders groups from all over the world,” O’Brien added. “None of these organizations are likely to close up shop and go home without a fight.”
The number of illegal immigrants crossing the Darien Gap is incredibly massive — and rising. More than half a million migrants passed through the region in 2023, double the nearly 250,000 that had crossed the year before, according to the Council of Foreign Relations.
“The border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, moved to Panama,” Mulino said on the campaign trail. “We’re going to close the Darien and we’re going to repatriate all these people,” referring to a vast jungle region across Panama and Colombia known as the Darien Gap.
The pledge has received notable coverage from American media, and the Secretary of State’s office made mention of anticipated cooperation on the issue shortly after Mulino’s election victory.
The Darien Gap, however, is roughly 40 miles wide and 100 miles long, with a combination of rainforests and mountains and virtually no government presence, according to the Guardian. Hiking through the region can take days.
The area is also under the de facto authority of drug-trafficking organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Gulf Clan paramilitary group, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The groups are known to extort and sexually assault travelers who pass through the region.
The idea of closing off the Darien has long been regarded as too much of a burden to accomplish, given these factors.
“Panama closed their border,” Wisconsin GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany said in 2021 after a trip to the Darien Gap. “But they, in effect, can’t because of the incredible crush of migrants that are coming from all over the world.”
More recently, Juan Pappier, the Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch, framed Mulino’s promise to close the Darien Gap as “virtually impossible.”
The majority of migrants crossing the Darien Gap are Venezuelan nationals, but people from Ecuador, Haiti and other African and Asian countries also utilize these routes to make it to the U.S. border.
Panamanians have made notice of the enormous flow of migrants crossing their country on a daily basis.
“It’s impossible to not run into a foreigner who is begging for money or puts their child in front of you to beg for money, or sell you chewing gum or candy,” Allan Baitel, a born-and-raised Panamanian citizen, told the DCNF. “We have a lot of individuals who are present on the streets at all times, 24 hours a day with signs asking for help.”
Baitel noted that the government is “doing its best” to mitigate disruptions to daily Panamanian life by getting the migrants off the street and moving them to the border of Costa Rica. While he acknowledged the difficulty in closing up the Darien Gap, he expressed optimism over Mulino’s background.
“It’s going to be very hard to close the gap, very difficult,” he said, noting that Colombia was unlikely to help in the effort. Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has long been hesitant to adopt measures to physically bar migrants from entering the jungle, claiming that a more humanitarian approach should be taken.
“Let me tell you that Mulino’s background is in security,” Baitel said. “He has preparation in having to deal with a lot of these issues, so he may have something up his sleeve.”
Currently, the Panamanian government’s policy has been to immediately bus incoming migrants to the Costa Rican border, allowing them to carry on in their U.S.-bound journey. In a recent radio interview, the incoming president said most would-be migrants would simply not even try to cross Panama once he begins deporting them.
“Because when we start to deport people here in an immediate deportation plan the interest for sneaking through Panama will decrease,” Mulino said in the radio interview. “I assure you they are going to say that going through Panama is not attractive because they are deporting you.”
For many Panamanian citizens, the crisis hasn’t made much of a personal impact on them since the vast majority of the migrants are quickly moving on and out of the country.
“We don’t see that many, no one wants to stay here. They want to get to the shining city on the hill,” said Surse Pierpoint, a third-generation Panamanian who spoke to the DCNF.
Pierpoint said that the topic of immigration doesn’t even crack the “top five” issues that matter to him at the moment. Like many other voters, Pierpoint cited the tough economic times the country has faced and he liked Mulino’s agenda for the private sector.
Panama, once the top performing economy in Latin America, has struggled with credit downgrades, slow economic growth, less foreign direct investment and the closing of a major copper mine. The president-elect campaigned on a pledge to bring life back into the private sector with a pro-market agenda.
As for closing the Darien Gap, Pierpoint has doubts: “I don’t know how he can do that frankly,” he said. “It sounds good, but I don’t see how it’s feasible in the short term.”
While so much attention has been focused on Mulino’s ability to close the migration routes himself, policy experts in Washington, D.C,. and locals in Panama alike also pointed the finger back at the Biden administration. The crisis taking place in this Latin American isthmus, they say, begins and ends at the White House.
“Panama president-elect Jose Mulino’s pledge to close the Darien Gap route that migrants are traversing on their way to the U.S. southern border demonstrates the far-reaching negative consequences of Pres. Biden’s immigration policies,” Eric Ruark, director of research at NumbersUSA, said to the DCNF. “This is a humanitarian crisis entirely of President’ Biden’s making, and Panama is just one of the countries dealing with the fallout.”
“All of this has to do with the United States,” Baitel added. “It will not cease until there’s a very drastic change in the United States.”
From Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies as published by The Daily Mail
US law enforcement sources tell me the rumour is patently absurd
There were no signs of human life, just railroad tracks and a rough dirt road, six miles west of a small Mexican mountain town.
But this was definitely the place described to me.
On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.
Now, I’d gone to find them.
As my translator and I picked our way through the mountain landscape dotted with pines, prickly pear cacti and brambles 40 miles northeast of Mexico City, the high desert looked empty.
Then we spotted someone watching us from behind a cluster of rocks.
‘Not immigration!’ I shouted in Spanish. ‘Friendly journalists. Please show yourselves.’
With that, some two dozen bleary-eyed men, women and children emerged from their hidey holes.
On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.
They were in rough condition, having just weathered a night on bare ground, too frightened of roaming Mexican immigration officers to build fires and too cold to sleep.
They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.
‘We haven’t eaten since yesterday. We don’t have that much money,’ a Venezuelan man named Jesus told me.
Another young Venezuelan, who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident back home, navigated the rough terrain on crutches, an empty pant leg flapping wildly. They told me that other groups were camped in the area.
Why?
Most of the migrants I met in Mexico City said they were giving up on their plans to sneak into America. As I reported last week, these people were either returning to their home countries or settling in Mexico.
Clearly, threats from the incoming Trump administration to close the border and deport all illegals are having the desired deterrent effect.
Other migrants said they’d make up their minds before the President-elect’s January 20 inauguration, to see if the Biden administration would approve their applications for ‘humanitarian parole’.
Using the Biden-created ‘CBP One’ mobile app to lodge such claims, some 771,000 migrants have entered into the US since January 2023. Trump has said he’ll end the program on Day One.
But there is a contingent of migrants who are refusing to be turned away. These are the ones escaping from urban encampments into the woods, in a race against time to illegally cross the border before Trump’s swearing-in.
They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.
It’s hard not to conclude that these migrants were drawn here, in large part, by President Biden’s disastrous immigration policies, resulting in more than 10 million migrants entering the US during his term. The message that has been sent to the world the past four years is that, if you make it to the border, you’ll likely find a way to cross.
And indeed, as I soon learned, this group had been convinced by a particularly delusional rumor sweeping Mexico City’s migrant camps.
It’s their firm belief that on Wednesday, December 18, the US and Mexican governments are going to withdraw all troops and border guards, giving tens of thousands of migrants one last chance to cross the border before the coming Trump crackdown.
December 18 is ‘International Migrants Day’, declared by the United Nations in 2000, as a time to recognize the plight of migrants worldwide.
‘On International Migrant’s Day, they’re going to open the border gates,’ a young Ecuadorian man named Jason confidently explained to me.
Six men sitting around him nodded in agreement.
My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends.
Nonetheless, I embedded myself for the day with this group of true believers – hailing from Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras – as they waited at a junction in the middle of the desert, where trains are known to stop for five to 10 minutes as the tracks are switched.
My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends. (Above) Mexican immigration on patrol
The migrants’ plan was to hitch a ride on top of a freight train for a dangerous three or four-day trip north. The ultimate destination: The border crossing at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Word was the next train was due at noon.
There were three mothers with six young children among the group of 25; only one of the kids was accompanied by a father.
The rest were single young men in their 20s, including several who admitted they’d illegally crossed the border before and made their way to Denver and Houston, only to be deported after serving time for crimes.
One of these men refused to allow me to record him on either audio or video. Another told me he had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol during his time in Denver.
Everyone was on edge – and for good reason.
Trump has threatened Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, with 25 percent trade tariffs if she does not do what she can to halt illegal migration.
In response, she has enhanced tough nationwide immigration enforcement operations. Mexican National Guard and immigration officers are patrolling rail lines with orders to capture every immigrant and ship them a thousand miles south to Mexican cities on the border with Guatemala.
The migrants fear that and more.
‘Mexican immigration takes your money away, whatever you have, they take it away,’ said Alexander, a 30-something Colombian. ‘We’re running away from them.’
Two young men anointed themselves lookouts to warn the others when strange vehicles approached. They asked me to hide my rental car in the brush.
As we waited for the noon train, a motorbike carrying a man and a woman pulled up on the dirt road running parallel to the train tracks.
‘Immigration knows you are all here,’ the man warned in Spanish. ‘They’ll take all of your cell phones and money and send you to Tapachula. Hide in the landfill.’
At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.
Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.
At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.
Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.
‘There’s no way they can get on,’ one of the lookouts said. ‘It’s going to be slippery. It’s very dangerous for the children on top.’
The wait continued.
More hours later, another train horn sounded. The migrants ran for it. The legless Venezuelan man on crutches somehow managing to keep up.
I followed close behind as the train stopped and the migrants scrambled up ladders onto the roof of one car. But, again, they were foiled.
A truck of armed Mexican National Guard troops and two immigration enforcement vans approached. Everyone rushed back down, dropping their backpacks off the train in a swirl of panic.
Seconds before the immigration vans arrived, they group disappeared into the brush.
I lingered to talk to the guards, but their vehicles never slowed. Though I could see that the two vans were full of migrants, perhaps caught elsewhere along the train line.
The train chugged away without anyone on it. And, shortly after, the migrants emerged from the brush once again.
This time, they refused to speak to me, hurrying off down the road… to a likely dead end.
illegal immigration
Shocking footage shows Biden admin selling off southern border wall before Trump takes office
From LifeSiteNews
By Wade Searle
Many notable GOP figures are pushing back on the Biden-Harris White House for an apparent attempt to greatly hinder the incoming Trump administration’s plan to finish the southern border wall.
The Biden administration has been caught moving away unused materials for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to be auctioned off online, according to shocking footage taken by a US Customs agent, with bidding starting at just $5.00.
A border patrol agent told The Daily Wire that the material for the construction of the border wall along the southern border of the United States is being taken from multiple areas in Arizona: Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points, with the goal to “move all of it off the border before Christmas.” Footage provided by the border patrol agent shows several unused sections of border wall being taken away on flatbed trucks owned by DP Trucking LLC, a government contractor. The owner, Harold Lambeth, confirmed to Daily Wire over the phone that the border wall materials are indeed being transported away from construction sites– although he was “unable to disclose” any further information. The materials are being auctioned through GovPlanet, an online auction marketplace for surplus government equipment, with bidding for each section of wall panels beginning at just $5.00, according to the website. Materials for border wall construction were similarly sold by the Biden administration in 2023 through GovPlanet.
The Daily Wire exclusive led to widespread outrage on X, formerly known as Twitter, with many notable GOP figures pushing back on the Biden-Harris White House for an apparent attempt to greatly hinder the incoming Trump administration’s plan to finish the southern border wall. Elon Musk shared the footage in shock, writing “what!?” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said, “President Biden and Kamala Harris have successfully put illegal aliens over the safety and security of our own citizens,” in a statement posted to X on Thursday, adding, “Never forget why the American people rejected them.” Missouri Representative Eric Burlison accused the Biden administration of “intentionally sabotaging President Trump and the American people.”
Eric Schmitt, the Senator from Missouri, sent a letter on Friday to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding that he “immediately cease the auctioning off of border wall materials.” Most notably, the letter contains a thorough analysis of the already completed sales of border wall material, finding that the Biden-Harris administration is recouping just 0.02% of the taxpayer money used to originally purchase the material under President Trump’s first term.
Hope may not be lost for the unused border wall material, however. In a conversation with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick revealed that the state of Texas plans to purchase the border wall material up for auction and “give it to [President-Elect Donald] Trump.” Patrick told Ingraham that he has “a billion dollars in my pocket to do it,” adding that he plans to “go in and buy it all”. In a statement posted to X on Friday, the Lt. Gov wrote that “[Texas Governor Abbott] and I spoke last night about purchasing ‘wall’ material President Biden is auctioning off. The Governor had already instructed the [Texas Facilities Comission], which oversees Texas’ border wall construction, to look at what Biden was selling.” According to Patrick, the Texas Facilities Commission claims that the material for sale is mostly junk, including panels “covered in concrete and rust”.
“Rest assured, if they sell any panels that make economic sense, we will buy them and give them to President Trump when he takes office.” Lt. Gov. Patrick concluded.
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