The Panamanian government announced this Friday that it will begin to deport migrants who enter the country through the inhospitable jungle of the Darién, on the border with Colombia, in order to stop the migratory wave towards the United States.
“Within our capabilities and budget We will increase actions to gradually and progressively increase deportations and expulsions” of migrants who enter the country irregularly, said the national director of Migration, Samira Gozaine, at a press conference.
At the press conference, the officials also announced that they will remove the checkpoints and assistance to migrants in the host towns of Darién.
In addition, they will redouble surveillance and control at all points of entry into the country. and there will be more maritime patrols to prevent people smuggling in boats from Colombia.
According to the newspaper La Estrella de Panamá, they will also reduce the time spent in Panama in cases of tourism and will increase the economic solvency that a person must have to enter the country. Both measures with which they seek to prevent people from remaining irregularly in Panama.
“The period that Migration personnel authorize to carry out tourism in the country will decrease from 90 to 15 days, and after the period they must pay fines,” according to the aforementioned newspaper, which clarified, however, that this measure will not apply to all people. Not all nationalities.
The economic solvency, for its part, will go from 500 to 1,000 dollars.
The natural border of the Darién, 266 km long and 575,000 hectares in area, in recent years has become a corridor for migrants who, from South America, they try to reach the United States through Central America and Mexico.
According to official data, so far this year more than 348,000 people have crossed the Darién, despite the fact that the United States has warned that it will not allow those who enter Panama irregularly to enter its territory.
Of that total, according to Gozaine, since April the Panamanian authorities have deported 452 people, a tiny number.
(Also read: Neither buoys, nor fences, nor barbed wire stop the passage of migrants to the US.)
Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda / EFE
Because it is a tropical jungle full of trails, the Panamanian authorities have said that it is impossible to close the Darien border, as some political sectors of this Central American country that lacks an Army have repeatedly raised.
Panama receives travelers at stations where it takes their biometric data and offers them medical assistance and food, a unique operation on the continent in which it has invested almost 70 million dollars in recent years, according to official data.
However, the current migratory flow has exceeded the capacities not only of these facilities, created in 2015 and which have been repowered over time, but also of the international organizations that are located in Darién.
What will the deportation be like?
The measures to contain the migratory wave, which are in force as of this date, “They will be made for all those people who remain illegally or intend to remain illegally in the territory” Panamanian, he warned.
To this end, the Panamanian government is preparing various aircraft and is in the process of hiring charter flights for the deportation of migrants.
(Also: Panama points to Colombia for lack of cooperation in migration in the Darién: what happens?)
The total number of migrants that this year have entered Panama through the Darién already exceeds the figure for the entire previous year by more than 100,000, when 248,000 people made that journey, breaking all previous jungle migration records.
In the last month, an average of 2,500 to 3,000 migrants have arrived in the Central American country daily from Colombia. However, Gozaine acknowledged that the Panamanian government will not be able to carry out mass deportations due to lack of resources, so they will focus first on people with criminal records.
Samira Gozaine, director of @migrationpanamaannounced the new immigration measures that Panama will implement.
The tourism period will be reduced from 90 to 15 days, “not for all nationalities and according to the profiling”, and economic solvency of a thousand dollars and up will be required. pic.twitter.com/jHoFdG4b75– Telemetro Reporta (@TReporta) September 8, 2023
“Obviously, we have limited resources, we would like if 3,000 people enter (in an irregular manner to Panama) to deport 3,000, but it is impossible, it is not operational,” said the official.
Almost half are Venezuelans, although Haitians, Ecuadorians and Colombians also stand out. In addition, there are Asians, with a growing number of Chinese, and Africans, especially from Cameroon.
*With AFP and EFE
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