Caribbean & Central America - October 2024

In late August Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino hailed the first of a series of US-funded repatriation flights to deport illegal migrants who had entered the country via the Darién Gap – the lawless jungle border with Colombia, which is a key migration corridor to the US. This was in line with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) struck with Washington soon after Mulino was inaugurated on 1 July [SSR-24-08]. While the authorities have claimed a drop in the number of migrants seeking to cross the Darién Gap, Mulino’s promises of tough action to limit the flow of migrants, which have also seen authorities attempt to close the border, may prove elusive.

On 20 August a group of 29 Colombians who had illegally crossed the Darién Gap from Colombia to Panama were put on a repatriation plane back to the Colombian city of Medellín in what was the first of the US-funded flights. A month later, on 20 September, the Panamanian migration authorities (SNM) said that a total of 11 flights had taken place, with 433 people deported in line with the MoU struck with the US, which pledged US$6m in funding for the flights.

While most of those deported are Ecuadoreans and Colombians, it is worth pointing out that the largest single group of migrants crossing the Darién Gap is Venezuelans (who accounted for 328,667 of the record 520,085 migrants who crossed the Darién Gap last year). However, amid claims of fraud in Venezuela’s 28 July presidential election, diplomatic relations between Panama and Venezuela have been suspended, effectively ruling out any bilateral talks on the migration issue or repatriation flights back to Venezuela now that flights between the two countries are suspended.

Amid scepticism regarding the policy of deporting illegal migrants on repatriation flights, in the absence of efforts to tackle the factors driving migration in the first place [SSR-24-08], on 23 September the SNM announced that so far this year 257,974 people had entered the Darién, a drop of 34% on the same period in 2023. However, an update issued a month earlier by US human rights lobby group Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), in response to claims by the authorities of a drop in crossings, suggested that this would be a “temporary lull”. Wola considers that the inauguration of a president promising to crack down on migration “may have placed ‘would-be migrants’ in a momentary ‘wait and see’ mode”, along with the announcement regarding deportation flights and other efforts to limit Darién migration.

• Factors driving up migration

Other factors indicate that this year’s drop in the number of migrants seeking to cross the Darién Gap may be temporary. These include the political crisis in Venezuela which suggests a new exodus may begin from that country. The Darién is being crossed by growing numbers of Haitians and Cubans, whose countries are also in crisis, as well as extra-regional migrants from countries including China, Afghanistan, India, and various African countries.

Boosting ties with neighbours

The Mulino government has also sought to shore up ties with neighbouring Colombia and Costa Rica as part of efforts to tackle illegal migration. Most recently, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, on 24 September Mulino met Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro (who had previously been critical of the new government’s efforts to close the border). The two pledged to come up with a joint strategy to tackle migration. Meanwhile on 23 August President Mulino hosted his Costa Rican counterpart Rodrigo Chaves – the first foreign president to visit Panama since Mulino took office. Among other things, the two leaders committed to revising and enhancing border controls, while a joint statement released following the meeting underlined Costa Rican support for Panama’s international efforts to control illegal migration on its border with Colombia.

Then, three days after the Chaves-Mulino meeting, Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, met his Colombian counterpart Luis Gilberto Murillo and the head of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the Colombian city of Cartagena (Bolívar department) to discuss migration. According to a joint statement, the three governments agreed to implement “a plan of action with concrete and realistic steps to strengthen Colombian and Panamanian state presence along their shared border”. In line with this they committed “to improving control and regulation mechanisms, to the sharing of information, and identity verification”, as well as boosting cooperation to disband human trafficking and migrant smuggling networks.