Panama City, Apr 10 (EFE).- The secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, will meet this Tuesday in the Panamanian capital with the foreign ministers of Panama and Colombia to discuss the serious migratory crisis that he is experiencing the region, an official source informed EFE on Monday.
Mayorkas will address the issue of the growing migratory flow from Latin America to the United States in a meeting that will culminate in a joint statement by the senior US official and the foreign ministers of Panama and Colombia, Janaina Tewaney Mencomo and Álvaro Leyva, respectively.
Until now, no specific details have been announced about this meeting, in which the growing migratory flow through the dangerous Darien jungle, which acts as the natural border between Colombia and Panama, on its way to North America, will be safely discussed.
Panama is the entrance to Central America from the south of the American continent and serves as a passage for thousands of irregular migrants from countries around the world who travel by land to the United States.
With the growing trend of this migratory flow, it is estimated that this year some 400,000 people will cross the Darién jungle, almost double the more than 248,000 migrants who did so in 2022.
In the first three months of 2023 alone, some 87,390 irregular migrants crossed the jungle, seven times more than in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report by the National Migration Service (SNM).
On April 20, Panama and the US had already signed an agreement to improve the management of irregular migration, which is part of the efforts of the White House to outline with its “key partners a new joint road map in response to the historic flows of migrants and refugees in the region”, was said on that occasion.
This agreement, called the Letter of Understanding on Migration Management and Migrant Protection, was signed by the Panamanian Minister of Public Security, Juan Pino, and the business manager of the US Embassy, Stewart Tuttle, within the framework of a regional ministerial meeting on migration and security.
Representatives of some 20 countries on the continent participated in that regional ministerial meeting, including the US Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, Antony Blinken and Alejandro Mayorkas, respectively.
Likewise, in February 2023, representatives of the United States, Colombia, and Panama met in the Colombian town of Apartadó. Among the “concrete” actions and commitments reached in that meeting were “initiating dialogues between the immigration authorities of Panama and Colombia; dialogue with the countries of origin of the migrants and strengthen the exchange of judicial information and intelligence work”.
