Record Number of US-Bound Migrants Enters Panama Amid Complaints Colombia Not Cooperating

Haitian migrants cross the jungle of the Darien Gap, near Acandi, Choco department, Colombia, heading to Panama, on September 26, 2021. Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images

The population of an entire U.S. city has trudged through the Darien Gap so far this year.

Panama migration officials reported that upwards of 260,000 illegal immigrants have entered their country from the jungle that defines the border with Colombia, exceeding total migrant traffic for 2022 in just seven months. For perspective, that’s more than the population of Des Moines, Iowa.

Complicating matters is the accusation of a Panamanian official who claims that Colombia isn’t doing its part to help stem the record-breaking flow of migrants, most of whom are heading toward the United States.

Panama’s director of the National Migration Service, Samira Gozaine, told reporters that Colombia “does not want to cooperate with closing traffic, with minimizing traffic ... Panama is the only country that invests effort and money in caring for this population that arrives almost dying in the Darien. ... Nobody wants to invest in these people.”

During an Aug. 4 news conference, Ms. Gozaine said, “More than 260,000 migrants have crossed the jungle bound for North America.”

Earlier that same week, the deputy director for Panama’s migration service, María Isabel Saravia, said that the number of migrants who crossed into Panama this year as of Aug. 1 was 248,901.

While the data clearly changed in those three days, they paint a vivid picture regardless. Both numbers surpassed 2022 migrant flows by a wide margin. The total migrant encounters at Panama’s southern frontier for all of 2022 was 248,284.

Panama’s ongoing inundation of illegal immigrants stands in stark contrast to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) report from June 20. The update observed that since the return to Title 8 immigration enforcement on May 12, there’s been a “significant reduction” in illegal immigrant encounters at the southwest border.

But according to Panama’s migration service, nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants arrived—heading north—in June alone. That number was almost 40,000 in May.

“As we continue to execute our plans—including delivering strengthened consequences for those who cross unlawfully while expanding access to lawful pathways and processes—we will continue to monitor changes in encounter trends and adjust our response as necessary,” CBP senior official Troy A. Miller said.

Passing the Buck

“Any impact to control those flows has to involve coordinated border controls by all governments,” Evan Ellis, a Latin America research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, told The Epoch Times. 

Mr. Ellis said the Darien Gap poses a unique challenge for border control agents. The highly rugged terrain and the presence of drug cartels profiting off of illegal immigrant trafficking complicate patrol efforts.

As in Panama and other countries in the Americas, the sheer number of illegal immigrants passing through as they ultimately try to reach the United States leaves little incentive for a country such as Colombia to try to stop the flow.

Migrants headed for the United States travel through the jungle in Darien Province, Panama, on Oct. 13, 2022. Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

Mr. Ellis doesn’t believe that Colombian officials are being deliberately negligent, but instead that it’s a matter of resources and other priorities for the administration of Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

“I think it’s a legitimate complaint [from Panama], but frankly, that is a hard area to control,” Mr. Ellis said. “Could the Colombians do more? Probably.”

Mr. Ellis said that there’s generally good cooperation between Panama and Colombia on migration, but that it isn’t solving the problem. He called U.S. support for the crisis a “drop in the bucket” amid such overwhelming migrant numbers.

In May, senior Biden administration officials rattled sabers to send U.S. troops to support security initiatives in the lawless jungle between Panama and Colombia. Army Gen. Laura Richardson, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, traveled to the Darien Gap on May 22 to assess the situation. However, no specific timeline was established for the arrival of U.S. troops after a meeting with the Colombian National Police.

Gen. Richardson also met with Panamanian officials on June 14 to 16 to “reaffirm the close security partnership between the United States and Panama” and to discuss relief efforts for the “evolving humanitarian crisis” emerging from the Darien Gap.

“There is a legitimate need on both sides for more support,” Mr. Ellis said.

He said that officials in Latin American countries, including Panama and Colombia, have adopted a sort of pass-the-buck mentality when it comes to the staggering numbers of illegal immigrants arriving.

“Both governments are trying to facilitate getting you [migrants] though as fast as you want to go,” Mr. Ellis said.

This appears to be the case because buses are waiting to take migrants from the place where they emerge on Panama’s side of the Darien Gap—near Bajo Chiquito—directly to the border of Costa Rica. An Aug. 8 report stated that about 2,000 migrants arrive at Costa Rica’s border near Paso Canoas daily.

Disappearing Act

On May 19, U.S. Department of Homeland Security official Blas Nuñez-Neto said that illegal immigrant encounters along the southwest border dropped by 70 percent the week after Title 42 ended. Another CBP report confirms a drop in encounters through mid-June.

But Panama’s migration officials reported tens of thousands of migrants entering their country in May and June. So with that many arriving and leaving Panama, the question becomes: Where did all those U.S.-bound migrants go?

“Customs and Border Protection may not be tracking all the encounters. The data management system could be faulty, and the environment could be chaotic. ... Also, making a claim that numbers of encounters are reduced is not the same as saying the number of entries is reduced,” Irina Tsukerman told The Epoch Times.

Asylum-seeking illegal immigrants sit by concertina wire fencing while waiting to be transported by U.S. law enforcement officers after crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on July 24, 2023. Go Nakamura/Reuters

Ms. Tsukerman, a national security lawyer, regional analyst, and the founder of Scarab Rising, said that many things could contribute to the discrepancy between the record amount of migrants in Panama and a simultaneous decrease in CBP southwest border encounters.

“Given that the Title 8 policy was publicly announced, it is entirely possible that everyone benefiting from the open border policy would have time to prepare and to find routes where they would be less likely to run into law enforcement,” she said.

“It is also very likely that, despite efforts to reach the U.S., many of these migrants are rerouted ... and never reach the border. Satellite imagery could be one way of providing accurate data about the mass movement of these groups. Tracking information from neighboring countries could also reveal more of the story.”

Ms. Tsukerman said that Colombia is dealing with its own laundry list of challenges and has struggled to keep up with just the number of Venezuelans who have entered the country.

But if the migrant flow heading north can’t be filtered or stopped at the source, Ms. Tsukerman said that it spells trouble for U.S. officials.

“If Colombia cannot be relied upon to stave off an influx of these migrants, U.S. border security, already overwhelmed despite recent restrictions, could face an unprecedented crisis,” she said.

Meanwhile, Panama is caught between a rock and a hard place on the other side of the remote jungle that it shares with Colombia. And as the caravans continue drifting north, no one seems to be in a hurry to stop them.

“At the end of the day, every sovereign nation will put their interests first,” Mr. Ellis said.