Panama City, (EFE).- More than 31,000 irregular migrants traveling to North America have crossed the dangerous Darien jungle so far this year, the natural border between Colombia and Panama, almost the same number as in the first 5 months 2022, according to official Panamanian statistics.
From January 1 until early Wednesday morning, a total of 31,610 mobile migrants had crossed the 266-kilometre jungle, according to data provided to EFE by the National Migration Service (SNM). Between January and May 2022 the figure reached 33,819.
15% of travelers so far this year are “people in a special state of vulnerability: boys, girls and adolescents,” the deputy director of the SNM, María Isabel Saravia, told EFE on Wednesday.
Just last January, 24,634 people arrived in the Panamanian province of Darién, five times more than in the same month last year. And so far in February 6,976 had done so, of which 1,156 arrived on Tuesday.
The crossing of Haitians and extracontinentals grows
Haitian nationals are the largest migrant group so far with 12,585 people, followed by Ecuador (8,240), Venezuela (3,535), India (641) and Colombia (465). The rest of the travelers come from more than 30 countries around the world, including South America, Asia and Africa.
“This year we have had an increase in extracontinental citizens, who enter the American continent from the South. We have had an increase in Colombian and Ecuadorian citizens,” said Saravia.
In 2022, Venezuelan nationals (150,327) led the historic passage of 248,284 irregular migrants through the jungle, followed by Ecuador (29,356) and Haiti (22,435); in 2021, it was the Haitians, and years before, in the 2015-2016 crisis, it was the Cubans.
The restrictions imposed by the United States on the entry of irregular Venezuelan migrants in mid-October stopped the avalanche of these, which was evidenced in the numbers of travelers crossing the Darién: from 59,773 in that same month they fell to 16,632 in November 2022.
The dynamics regarding the nationalities that cross the jungle the most “we hope will change throughout the year. It will depend on the (immigration) policies of the United States and Canada, which are the main destinations,” as well as on whether third countries “open free visas,” said Panama’s deputy director of Migration.
“We calculate that the figures in 2023 will not drop for various reasons: sociopolitical, geographical, climate change, the post-covid era, opportunity issues, the war” in Ukraine, he valued.
Discourage irregular migration and combat traffickers
The official stressed the humanitarian work of the Panamanian State, which offers “with finite resources” food and health services to irregular travelers, from whom it also takes biometric data.
Panama has been “transparent in the figures, but we are facing a human drama” that the Panamanian State has managed to make visible to the rest of the region, Saravia said.
“We have to talk about discouraging irregular routes and have a commitment between the States (of origin, transit and destination) to fight against organized crime, because these people are trafficked and treated by organized crime,” he added.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 36 migrants died in 2022 when they crossed the Darién, where travelers face the dangers of a wild environment – animals, swollen rivers, ravines – as well as those derived from the presence of organized crime, which has used the area for decades to traffic drugs, weapons and people.
That death toll is possibly “only a small fraction of the true number of lives lost” in that area, the IOM warned last January.
Many of these travelers are also victims of robberies and sexual violence, including minors. In Panama, people responsible for these attacks on migrants have already been arrested and convicted.