Federal officials highlighted this week the U.S. government's efforts to combat migration in the dangerous Darién Gap jungle between Panama and Colombia, where more than 250,000 people are reported to have illegally crossed as of July 2023.
Meanwhile, just-released U.S. data shows a jump in arrests of border crossers.
"We continue to enforce the immigration laws of the United States, and we continue to work across the hemisphere with our allies to reduce irregular migration and attack the criminal networks that manipulate and abuse people during this journey," said Luis Miranda, the Department of Homeland Security's principal deputy assistant communications secretary, at a virtual Spanish-language news conference Thursday.
The conference came amid a record number of people crossing the Darién Gap this year, despite U.S. and regional efforts to reduce the number of people who migrate illegally through the treacherous and wild stretch that connects Central and South America.
In April, Homeland Security announced a joint, two-month campaign with Panama and Colombia to "end the illicit movement of people" in the Darién. Miranda said that since April 20, the federal government has supported the mobilization of over 3,880 troops from Panama and Colombia as well as more than 271,000 pounds of equipment to boost the area's security.
"Our allies in Panama and Colombia continue doing the work to interrupt and stop illegal operations of activities such as human trafficking through the Darién," he said.
Meanwhile, Marta Youth, principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, spoke of the financial investments the U.S. has made in the Western Hemisphere to address and deter irregular migration. This includes nearly $18 million in humanitarian aid to the Panamanian government in the past fiscal year that had been used to tend to the basic needs of migrants who traveled through the Darién Gap, as well as a development initiative with over $4.2 billion in private sector investment to foster economic opportunity in northern Central America.
Youth also said that migrant processing centers, called Safe Mobility Offices, have been set up in Guatemala, Colombia and Costa Rica to help facilitate access to legal migration pathways to the United States, such as parole, family reunification and refugee programs. Over 19,000 people had registered in Guatemala and Colombia through the online platform for the initiative as of Aug. 10, Youth said.
"We are building the capacity of host countries and local communities as well so that they can integrate refugees and asylum seekers in their countries as well," she said.
CROSSINGS HIGH
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have nevertheless opted to cross the Darién Gap this year in hopes of reaching the United States. The United Nations said in early August that between January and July 2023, more than a quarter of a million people had attempted the dangerous crossing -- the same number as in 2022, when numbers had almost doubled from 2021.
The U.N. statistics reported that 55% of crossers were from Venezuela; 14% were Haitian and 14% were from Ecuador. The agency also said that some of the crossers were the Chilean- and Brazilian-born children of Haitians, as well as migrants from countries as near as Colombia and Peru and as far as China and Nepal.
U.S. figures released Friday showed arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico soared 33% from June to July, reversing course after a plunge that followed the introduction of new asylum restrictions in May. Through July of this year, nearly 252,000 migrants crossed Panama's Darién Gap, exceeding what had been a record-setting total for 2022.
The Border Patrol stopped migrants 132,652 times in July along the southern border, up from 99,545 times in June but down from 181,834 times in July 2022. Crossings were widely expected to increase after pandemic-related asylum restrictions ended May 11, but they fell in June to the second-lowest of Biden's presidency after new rules were enacted that make it extremely difficult to get asylum when crossing the border illegally.
President Joe Biden's administration insisted that its carrot-and-stick approach of expanding legal routes while imposing more punitive measures on those who enter illegally is working. It noted that illegal crossings were still down 27% from July 2022 and were well below the days that preceded the new immigration rules.
The increase from June to July was driven by a larger presence of families traveling with children -- nearly doubling to 60,161 arrests.
The journey is risky and migrants must face the wilderness, dangerous animals and criminal gangs that smuggle drugs and people in the stretch of jungle. Since 2014, the U.N. International Organization for Migration has recorded 316 people who have disappeared or died in the region.
"Conditions in the Darién Gap are dire. Many people, including children, arrive in Panama traumatized, injured, due to the lethal nature of the terrain and the high rates of extortion and sexual violence they experience along the way," Youth said.
Friday's U.S. data indicates a shift in border traffic to highly remote and insufferably hot parts of Arizona, which officials blamed on false advertising by smugglers that it was easier to cross there and be released in the United States. The Tucson area registered 39,215 arrests in July to become the busiest of nine geographic sectors along the border, up 60% from June and more than double from July 2022. John Modlin, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector chief, has said several large groups were found the first weekend of August, including one of 533 people from 17 countries near the remote town of Lukeville.
Miranda cited the administration's efforts to expand legal avenues for migration, including new parole processes for Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti and new reunification programs for Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. He also cited changes made to the CBP One app, a mobile application on which migrants can schedule immigration appointments at ports of entry, as well the addition of 65,000 temporary visas for nonagricultural workers. He also warned, as U.S. authorities have repeatedly said over the past months, that people who attempt to migrate illegally would not be eligible for the Biden administration's recently announced parole processes and other lawful pathways.
"For example, a Venezuelan family that can arrive legally through a parole process loses that ability if they cross illegally," said Miranda, who later added that even crossing Panama already makes people ineligible for the U.S.-based parole processes.
Miranda also said that in many cases, family members abroad pay for their families to come illegally to the U.S., and that these relatives should know what they are exposing would-be migrants to should they come through the Darién Gap or other dangerous routes.
"It can cost them their lives, but also extortion, rape, violence that they can suffer at the hands of criminal networks," he said. "Irregular migration is controlled by cartels today, and no one should expose their loved ones or friends to that."
LIMITED RESOURCES
Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the immigration advocacy think tank American Immigration Council, said that many people who worked on Darién Gap-related issues thought it was a "laughably unrealistic goal" that the joint effort between Panama, Colombia and the U.S. aimed to end the illicit movement of people during its 60-day campaign.
Lind said that once migrants cross the Darién Gap into Panama, it is challenging for the Central American nations' governments to turn them back because of limited financial and human resources.
"At a certain point, you need to have the government buy in. And a lot of governments say, "Why should we try to build up our capacity to resettle people when they want to come to the United States?" said Lind.
Samira Gozaine, director of Panama's National Migration Service, said in a recent TV interview with French public broadcaster France 24 that Colombia has not done enough to help Panama.
"We are feeling alone from the perspective of migration. Because the help we get is not the help we have asked for, or that we need," she said.
Lind, who visited the Darién Gap and its surrounding communities on the Panamanian side in June, said that the migrant camps there feel like "the lightest-footprint refugee camps" -- a reflection that the country is not a final destination, but a transit country.
"No one is really committing to making these fully fledged-out places, because no one wants to stay," she said. "The Panamanian government is not indifferent to people's suffering. But it doesn't see its goal as making people comfortable in Panama -- but getting them through."
Information for this article was contributed by Syra Ortiz Blanes of The Miami Herald (TNS); and by Elliot Spagat of The Associated Press.