Panamanian authorities said this Monday that 2023 closed with 520,085 migrants who crossed the Darién Jungle, of which 120,000 were minors, a record number compared to the 248,283 pedestrians who in 2022 followed this dangerous route to North America in search of better horizons.
(Also read: Due to the immigration crisis, the Ombudsman requests a meeting with Antony Blinken).
Venezuelans, 328,667; Ecuadorians, 57,222; Haitians, 46,558; and China, 25,344, “were the most frequent nationalities to cross” this year the border jungle with Colombia and arrived in Panama, the Panamanian Ministry of Public Security (Minseg) reported on its social networks.
The same waythe report provides figures that show a “significant drop” in the entry of migrants through the dense Darién junglein the months of October, November and December 2023 with 49,256, 37,231, and 24,626, respectively.
A migrant goes with his baby through the Darién jungle, near Bajo Chiquito, the first border port in Panama.
The new record of transit of migrants through Darién towards North America at the end of 2023 leaves behind that of previous years, like in 2020 when 8,594 immigrants crossed the jungle; in 2021, 133,726, and 2022, 248,283, according to the Minseg.
(Keep reading: The Pope calls for a 'humanitarian response' for migrants crossing the Darien jungle).
Thus, the previous year the record of more than half a million migrants in transit through the Darién, the jungle that connects the isthmus and South America, was broken. a figure that doubles last year's record and includes a marked increase in minors.
2023 “has been a year in which a record has been broken. More than 100,000 children and adolescents have passed through, 50% of them are under 5 years old,” The gender-based expert from the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), Johana Tejada López, told Efe in mid-December.
The majority of the families that migrate are from Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador and Colombia, explained Tejada López in the Lajas Blanca shelter which, like in Bajo Chiquito, is the scene of this situation with numerous families with children and adolescents.
Migrants get off canoes to be transferred to an immigration reception station in Lajas Blancas, Panama
The Unicef expert also warned of an increase in the arrival of minors separated from their parents during the crossing and adolescents who traveled “alone.”
The migrants first arrive in Bajo Chiquito after crossing the jungle, where the authorities register their data and sleep one night. The next day they go down in canoes –paid for by themselves – along the Tuquesa River to one of the two existing shelters in Darién.
(We recommend: Nine members of a migrant smuggling network through the Darién fall).
There, known to migrants as 'the UN', There are several organizations that offer humanitarian and medical aid, as well as the Panamanian authorities., which provide food assistance in a unique operation on the continent in which the Government has invested around 70 million dollars in recent years, according to official data. From Darien, Passers-by must board a bus – at their expense – to neighboring Costa Rica.
The restrictions announced by several transit countries, such as the deportations of irregular migrants with criminal records in Panama, or by the United States, that has put more obstacles to access to asylum, they do not stop the migratory flow.
EFE
#million #migrants #including #minors #crossed #Darien
