CITY OF PANAMA- The start of “deportations and expulsions” on charter and commercial flights of migrants entering Panama through the inhospitable Darien jungle is “imminent,” a U.S. official warned Tuesday.
This jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama has become a corridor for thousands of migrants from South America trying to reach the United States, a country that will hold elections in November with migration as a key issue.
“We have already visited all the airports (…), we have visited Darien, we have visited places where we are going to have the people, we have also spoken with the airlines, the contractors, and we are already in the final details,” said the regional attaché of Homeland Security of the United States, Marlen Piñeiro.
“We are still negotiating (with Panama) at this time, but the focus of this program is deportations and expulsions,” the official explained at a press conference in the Panamanian capital.
“I don’t want to give a date yet, but I do think that it is imminent that we are going to start” with the deportations, he added.
“Charter flights”
Piñeiro said the United States is “working very closely (with Panama) and very aggressively to establish charter flights that will be large numbers, commercial flights that will be large numbers.”
He added that the details are still being worked out, “but they will have an impact” on migration flows.
Panama and the United States signed an agreement on July 1 through which Washington will contribute six million dollars to finance this program..
In 2023, more than half a million people, mostly Venezuelans, crossed this jungle plagued by dangers such as fast-flowing rivers, wild animals and criminal groups that steal, rape and kill.
However, last Thursday, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino ruled out repatriating migrants “by force”, qualifying what he had said before.
“People don’t want to stay in Panama, people want to go to the United States, and if that issue becomes a situation for us, which can happen to a lesser or greater extent, then they will go there,” said Mulino.
In recent weeks, Panamanian authorities have closed several trails used by migrants in the jungle, so that they can use the steps that lead to immigration and customs posts.
At these posts there are also officials from international organizations who assist migrants before they board buses to continue their journey to Costa Rica.
“Obviously we want the numbers (of migrants) to decrease to the point that the jungle returns to being a jungle, a national park, and not a migration route,” Piñeiro said.
Source: With information from AFP
