Panama’s next president says he’ll try to shut down one of the world’s busiest migration routes

CITY OF PANAMA — Panama is on the verge of a dramatic change in its immigration policy that could reverberate from the dense Darien jungle to the border with the United States.

President-elect José Raúl Mulino says he will close a migration route used by more than 500,000 people last year. So far, Panama has helped quickly transport migrants through its territory so they can continue their journey north.

It remains to be seen whether Mulino is able to reduce migration through a sparsely populated region with little government presence, experts say.

“Panama and our Darién are not a transit route. It is our border,” Mulino stated after his victory with 34% of the votes in Sunday’s elections was formalized on Thursday night.

As he had suggested during his campaign, the 64-year-old lawyer and former Minister of Security said he would try to put an end to “the Darién odyssey that has no reason to exist.”

The migrant route through the narrow isthmus has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years with the help of organized crime in Colombia, making it an affordable, if dangerous, land route for hundreds of thousands.

It grew as countries like Mexico, under pressure from the U.S. government, imposed visa restrictions on several nationalities, including Venezuelans and just this week Peruvians, in an attempt to stop migrants from flying into the country only to continue onward. the border with the United States.

But masses of people accepted the challenge and set out on foot across the jungle-covered Colombian-Panamanian border. A crossing that could initially take a week or more was eventually reduced to two or three days as the road was consolidated and local entrepreneurs established a range of support services.

However, it is still a risky route. Reports of sexual assaults have continued to rise, with some migrants being killed by bandits in robberies and others drowning while trying to cross rushing rivers.

Even so, some 147,000 migrants have already entered Panama through Darién this year.

Previous attempts to close routes around the world have simply diverted traffic onto riskier routes.

“People migrate for many reasons and often do not have safe, orderly and legal ways to do so,” said Giuseppe Loprete, head of mission in Panama for the U.N. International Organization for Immigration. “When legal routes are not accessible, migrants risk turning to criminal networks, smugglers and dangerous routes, misled by misinformation.”

Loprete said representatives of the UN agency in Panama would meet with Mulino’s team once its members are named to learn the details of the president’s plans.

If Mulino could be even partially effective, it could produce a notable, but probably temporary, impact. As with the visa restrictions that inadvertently led migrants to the land route through Panama, if the factors pushing migrants to leave their countries persist, they will find other routes. One could be the dangerous sea routes from Colombia to Panama.

In a local radio interview Thursday, Mulino said the idea of ​​stopping the migratory flow is more philosophical than a physical obstacle.

“Because when we start deporting people here in an immediate deportation plan, the interest in sneaking through Panama will decrease,” he said. When the fourth plane loaded with migrants takes off, “I assure you that they are going to tell you that going through Panama is not attractive because they are deporting you.”

Julio Alonso, a Panamanian security expert, said it is unknown what Mulino could realistically achieve.

“This would be a radical change in Panamanian immigration policy to prevent more deaths and organized crime from using the route,” he stated. Among the challenges will be how it would work operationally along such an open and uncontrolled border.

“In Panama there is no type of repression with this situation, only free passage, humanitarian aid that has not managed to reduce the number of attacks, rapes, homicides and deaths on the Darién route,” said Alonso. Mulino’s proposal is “a deterrent measure, yes, (but) we will see if it can be fully executed.”

It is also unlikely that much can be achieved without much cooperation and coordination with Colombia and other countries, he said.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that “without considering the risk of returning migrants to dangerous situations, in mathematical terms I don’t know how they expect to mass deport” migrants.

“A daily plane, which would be extremely expensive, would only repatriate around 10% of the flow (between 1,000 and 1,200 per day). The United States only manages to carry out around 130 monthly flights around the world,” said Isacson.