PANAMA CITY: Panama will deport US-bound migrants who enter the country through the notoriously dangerous stretch of jungle known as the Darien Gap, president-elect Jose Raul Mulino said.
Mulino said that they will start a process of repatriation, in full compliance with the human rights of all the people. The 265-kilometer Darien Gap, which lies on the border with Colombia to the south, has become a corridor for migrants heading from South America through Central America and Mexico in hopes of reaching the US and a chance at a better life there.
They face treacherous terrain, dense jungle, wild animals and violent criminal gangs that extort, kidnap and abuse them.
Migrants in Panama in 2023
In 2023, a record 520,000 people — most of them Venezuelans — crossed through the gap. Nearly 120,000 of them were children. In 2022, sixty-two people died on the trek. The provisional count for 2023 stands at thirty-four.
So many people come through the Darien Gap that the Panamanian government has established facilities and earmarked resources to aid them.
But Mulino, a conservative lawyer aged 64, vowed during the election campaign that he would shut it down.
