PANAMA CITY, Panama: Panama‘s front-runner in the presidential election vowed on Tuesday to begin deporting migrants to the United States by preventing them from crossing the lawless jungle that straddles the country’s border with Colombia.
More than half a million people ventured into the so-called Darien Gap last year, facing dangerous river crossings and violent criminal gangs of extortion, kidnapping and abuse.
“We’re going to close the Darien and we’re going to repatriate all these people,” Jose Raul Mulino, who served as security minister during Ricardo Martinelli’s 2009-2014 presidency, said. He was talking to media during a visit to a working-class suburb of the capital. He, however, didn’t specify exactly how he would do it.
He however, hoped that the United Nations Refugee Agency will help him in this regard as he pledged to respect migrants’ human rights.
The UN agency, along with other world groups and NGOs, has personnel in the jungle helping migrants.
Most of those crossing the jungle are fleeing an economic crisis in Venezuela but migrants from Africa and Asia also enter the remote rainforest in a bid to reach the USA.
“The border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, moved to Panama,” said Mulino.
Mulino underlined the need for Panama to work with the US and Colombia to tackle the problem.
According to a survey by the Doxa firm published Monday, Mulino enjoys voter support of 34 percent as nation goes to polls on May 5.
That puts Mulino comfortably ahead of center-right lawyer Ricardo Lombana with 15 percent and former social democratic president Martin Torrijos with 13 percent.
Electoral tribunal of the country last month revoked the candidacy of Martinelli, a month after he lost his last bid to avoid jail and took asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy.
