METETÍ, Panama — Ayub Ibrahim had just emerged from the jungle. His feet still hurt. A month earlier, he had left his home in Somalia, fleeing a civil war, he said, traveling first to Turkey, then Brazil and finally crossing on foot a 106-kilometer stretch known as the Darien Gap. Resting in the sweltering San Vicente migrant camp in Panama with hundreds of other newcomers, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a half-dozen Americans with video cameras.
“Do you like Ilhan Omar?” one person asked. “What do you think of Joe Biden?”
Ibrahim, 20, said he admired Omar, the first Somali-American to serve in the U.S. Congress. He doesn't follow American politics, he added, but he believes Biden is a good President. When asked whether President Joseph R. Biden Jr. or former President Donald J. Trump would be better for immigrants, he chose Biden.
Ibrahim would later say that he had felt ambushed and confused by the questions. He had no intention of making a political statement. But by then it was too late.
One of his interlocutors, Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist and former Republican congressional candidate, had already posted an edited video of the conversation online. It spread across the internet, accumulating almost 2 million views on X.
The headline read: “Somali Illegals Proclaim Their Support for Ilhan Omar and Joe Biden Inside the Migrant Camp in Panama!”
As immigration becomes a dominant issue in the 2024 US presidential race, right-wing media outlets have been inundated with crude and often misleading videos of migrants emerging from the Darien Gap, a roadless stretch of rainforest. Panama that has become a bottleneck for thousands of people on the way to the United States.
The videos are presented as evidence of what Republicans often describe as an “invasion” by Muslim terrorists, Chinese spies and Latin American criminals. Posted on social media, the videos blame Biden for migration and falsely suggest that Democrats are encouraging him to create new illegal voters. International aid organizations are portrayed as profiteers profiting from human misery.
The New York Times traced much of that content to the work of Michael Yon, a former U.S. Army Green Beret who has become the go-to tour guide for right-wing journalists, politicians and social media influencers who They want to see the Darien Gap.
Content created by visitors has accompanied conversations about immigration on Fox News, Tucker Carlson's online show and even for Trump himself. The Republican presidential candidate reposted a video made by Loomer.
The Times followed a group as they toured camps on the edge of the Darien Gap, watching as participants interviewed migrants. Influencers gravitated toward immigrants from Africa, China and the Middle East, bombarding them with political questions.
When asked if humanitarian groups had given him money, Ibrahim said no. He also said that, as a Muslim, he supported equal rights for women and opposed discrimination against homosexuals. Those parts of the interview were removed from the version posted online.
In an interview with a program aired on Infowars, the far-right platform, Loomer questioned whether the Muslims he encountered, including Ibrahim, were “jihadists or people with jihadist tendencies.”
The next day, on a bus bound for Costa Rica, Ibrahim said he regretted the experience. “She wanted to give a bad image of immigrants to the world,” he said of Loomer. “His questions of her were not fair.”
Videos of immigrants in Panama have become weapons in the immigration battle, experts said. The content, repeated over and over again online, is very effective, particularly in creating the perception of the threat of violence, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
He noted that the images tend to focus on young men and exclude women and children, who might prompt more compassionate responses. She often refers to immigrants as “military-age men” and “invaders” and her claims of political or religious persecution in her country are often dismissed as falsehoods.
Influencers on tour argue that they are shedding light on a crisis that traditional media is not covering.
Focusing on Muslim and Chinese immigrants can create a distorted impression. Approximately 90 percent of the 520,000 people who crossed the Darien Gap last year were South Americans and Caribbeans, says the Panamanian government. The vast majority of that group comes from Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti, countries that are experiencing economic and political distress.
The number of immigrants from Africa, China and the Middle East has increased in the past two years, but is less than 8 percent of the total. Panama investigates immigrants from those regions for criminal or terrorist links. So far, the threat they could pose is theoretical.
“The misrepresentation of migrants crossing the Gap as invaders or illegals puts their lives at risk,” said Sandie Blanchet, UNICEF representative in Panama.
On a hot February afternoon outside a government migrant camp on the edge of the Chucunaque River, Yon accompanied an Epoch Times reporter and photographer up a hill, stopping to point out three weary Venezuelan migrants limping across a bridge.
“If we lose this, it's over,” he said. “You know what I mean? “The US is over.”
Yon has always had a knack for attracting attention. In his autobiography, he recounts killing a man with his bare hands in a bar fight. (The charges against him were eventually dismissed.) He later made headlines as a blogger and photographer on the front lines at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, he has immersed himself in right-wing politics around the world. On January 6, 2021, he stood outside the US Capitol and later falsely said the rioters were incited by “agents provocateurs.”
That year was a turning point for migration through the Darien Gap. What had been a trickle of just a few thousand people crossing the Gap each year became a torrent of 133,000, an increase driven largely by Haitians fleeing economic chaos.
Yon arrived in Panama in February of that year. She estimates that she has taken up to 60 people to see the camps and tries to stay behind the scenes. “I just want people to see it for themselves and make a decision,” he said. But he often portrays himself as an expert, participating in frequent interviews with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as well as in a 2022 video titled “Alien Invasion” produced by Rep. Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona.
Yon says he doesn't make money from traveling. He and his tours often target humanitarian organizations in the area, reserving particular ire for the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. The groups, they say, encourage migration by providing medical care, psychological support and nutrition before and after migrants undertake the journey. That is paid for with government contributions and private donations, funds that Yon calls “profits” that motivate groups to encourage more migration.
Diego Beltrán, acting director for Central, North America and the Caribbean of the migration organization, disputed the characterization and noted that the UN does not profit from its activities. The agency has helped more than 4 million immigrants settle legally in South America instead of moving north to the United States, he said.
Yon has forged close ties with the Panamanian government, particularly with its border patrol. His groups have frequently had access to facilities for immigrants, unlike traditional journalists. Recently, a border guard prevented The Times journalists from traveling to an indigenous village where Yon, along with American influencers, were filming. Although there were no other witnesses to the episode, Loomer spoke about it the next day on Infowars, the right-wing website founded by Jones, saying that The Times journalists were seen as a “security risk.”
For 10 days, he visited four migrant centers, navigated rivers in motorized canoes, toured the Panama Canal, and posted nearly 100 times on X about his trip. One video has more than 4.5 million views. “We are being invaded,” she said in the video, while boarding a bus with immigrants. “We are being replaced and it is no coincidence that this happens in an election year.”
At C
amp St. Vincent, Yazdan Faramehr, a 29-year-old Iranian bodybuilder who speaks good English, was surrounded by Americans wielding video cameras. As they asked him questions, he told them that he was looking forward to a fresh start in the large Persian community in Los Angeles. But Faramehr became uncomfortable when Loomer began asking about Iranians coming to the United States to “commit acts of Islamic terrorism.”
Concerned about drawing unwanted attention, he asked that the group not use his image. Yon posted a video on X anyway. It attracted dozens of responses from people speculating that Faramehr, who said he worked in human resources in Tehran, was a dangerous intruder with a secret agenda.
Contacted while traveling north from Panama, Faramehr said he thought it was fair that they “criticize your country's immigration system,” but he felt like they were out to get him.
“Honestly, I wish I had never spoken to them,” he said.
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