Since taking office at the start of the month, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino and his new right-of-centre Realizando Metas (RM) government have moved swiftly on a campaign pledge to curb illegal migration through the Darién Gap, a roadless expanse of jungle on the border with Colombia which serves as a key migration route to the US. As well as signing a deal with Washington soon after Mulino’s inauguration, under which the US would help deport illegal migrants through repatriation flights [WR-24-26], Panamanian authorities have begun efforts to close the border. This has sparked a response from neighbouring Colombia, raising the possibility of tensions with the left-wing government led by President Gustavo Petro.
In an interview with Pan-American Spanish language news channel CNN en Español on 11 July, Panama’s new public security (Minseg) minister, Frank Ábrego, said that efforts to block the crossings were being carried out specifically in the maritime area and at five of the 12 points through which illegal migrants attempted to enter Panamanian territory.
A former director of the national border service (Senafront), Ábrego went on to say that the government had installed barbed wire fences around each of the points, and was providing information to migrants seeking to pass, redirecting them to a checkpoint at Cañas Blancas, where Senafront units were stationed. As well as deploying Senafront to patrol land crossings, the government has also deployed patrols from the national aeronaval service (Senan) to the Caribbean and Pacific coasts as part of efforts to prevent the entry of illegal migrants.
A Minseg statement dated 11 July cites Ábrego as saying that “migratory flows will not stop from one day to the next…the problem is transnational and affects Panama as a transit country”. Complaining that migration last year cost Panama around US$100m while at the same time maintaining that the government was seeking to “protect migrants”, Ábrego said that the issue has “humanitarian and security implications due to migrant trafficking provoked by narcotrafficking and criminal organisations which operate on the border”.
Ábrego cited the threat of ‘coyotes’ who pose as guides that migrants must hire to cross the passage. A report published in August 2023 by the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) notes that the Colombian side of the Darién is controlled by the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), also known as the Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s largest drug trafficking organisation.
The new government’s agreement with Washington and its moves to close the border, both of which have raised eyebrows, follow earlier failed efforts by the previous Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) administration led by former president Laurentino Cortizo (2019-2024) at tackling the crisis, despite growing international attention devoted to it. In 2022 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Panama where he met Cortizo [WR-22-16], inked a bilateral accord on migration, and co-hosted a ministerial conference on migration attended by representatives from 20 countries.
Regional summits have also addressed the issue in recent years, while in April 2023 US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas met the now former foreign ministers of Panama (Janaina Tewaney, 2022-2024), and Colombia (Álvaro Leyva, 2022-2024) and agreed on three goals: ending the illicit movement of people and goods through the Darién; opening new lawful and flexible pathways for migrants as an alternative to irregular migration; and launching a poverty reduction plan [WR-23-35].
However, officials under the Cortizo government repeatedly expressed frustration at foreign inertia in response to the crisis, and the administration itself took action, announcing measures in September 2023 [WR-23-41]. These included plans to authorise the hiring of charter flights to increase deportations as well as new, stricter, requirements for some foreigners arriving by air.
Yet this ultimately failed to have an impact in the face of the factors which continue to drive migration in the first place: economic insecurity, climate change, political upheaval and violence in countries such as Venezuela (whose nationals accounted for 328,667 of the record 520,085 migrants who crossed the Darién Gap last year), Ecuador (whose nationals represented 57,222 of those seeking to cross last year) and Haiti (46,558).
Tensions with Colombia?
Ahead of taking office, Mulino’s headline-grabbing campaign pledge to “close” the Darién Gap (without providing further details on how his government intended to accomplish the feat) had prompted a response from across the border. The municipal government of Necoclí in Colombia’s Antioquia department, the main departure point for migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the Darién Gap, was widely cited by the media as expressing concern that this could result in a significant increase of migrants in Colombia.
Since then, the Mulino administration’s efforts to close border points have drawn reactions in Colombia. On 9 July, for example, President Petro took to social media to criticise Panama’s installation of barbed wire fences, which he warned would result in people drowning at sea. Petro called instead for migration to be tackled by “removing economic blockades and improving the econom[ies] of the South”.
Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) also weighed in on social media. Samper criticised the “regrettable acceptance” by Panama’s new government of “US policy of blocking migrants at southern borders”. He likened the Darién’s closure to the construction of an “inhumane wall”, forcing migrants into more perilous routes “at risk of their lives”.
Blinken meeting
It was noteworthy that during a bilateral meeting on 17 July between US Secretary of State Blinken and his new Panamanian counterpart Javier Martínez-Acha the two discussed “humanely managing migration”, along with “bolstering inclusive economic growth, promoting democratic governance and values…and combating drug trafficking”.
- Bolstering growth
At the meeting on 17 July, Secretary of State Blinken highlighted, among other new initiatives, a Western Hemisphere Semiconductor Initiative which he said will “turbocharge countries’ capacity to assemble, to test, and to package semiconductors”, beginning with Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (Apep) foreign affairs track ministerial meeting which Blinken was hosting in Washington, and in which Martínez-Acha was participating. The Apep ministerial meeting, which was attended by foreign ministers from the 12 participating countries (Barbados, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and the US), followed an inaugural summit in November 2023 [WR-23-45].
Launched in June 2022 by US President Joe Biden, Apep aims to strengthen regional resilience, competitiveness, and sustainable investment, with a focus on stabilising migration flows as part of this. It reflects US efforts to address the root causes of migration.
Scepticism over US deal
The agreement with the US regarding repatriation flights has been questioned by human rights activists. For example, Adam Isacson of US-based lobby group Washington Office on Latin American Affairs (Wola) was cited by newswire Reuters on 3 July as questioning the impact, saying “Even the equivalent of one plane per day (100-150 people) would mean…between 85% and 90% of immigrants would avoid deportation and could continue their journey…And the chance of ‘one plane per day’ happening is super-slim. These flights are expensive... I wouldn’t expect there to be enough funds to run more than two or three flights per week at the most.”
Human rights concerns
The issue of migrant rights made headlines under the Cortizo government due to its spat with international NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in March. This erupted after MSF sounded the alarm regarding a rise in sexual violence targeting migrants and urged the government to address the issue, prompting the government to order the NGO to halt all medical activities for migrants.
Since then, President Mulino’s efforts to close the border have met with alarm from both Colombia and Panama’s human rights ombudsmen. Panama’s ombudsman, Eduardo Leblanc, said repatriations should be “voluntary, not forced” while Colombia’s ombudsman’s office urged Panamanian authorities to ensure migrants’ rights are respected, also warning the closures of crossings would “increase the backlog” of people in municipalities affected.
Colombia’s ombudsman’s office issued a statement on 12 July citing modelling which suggests that if the border closures result in 10%-20% of the migrant population remaining in the neighbouring Urabá-Darién sub-region, within six months to a year, three local municipalities (San Juan de Urabá, Arboletes, and San Pedro de Urabá) would see a population increase of 2%-3%, with a possible spread of diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and leptospirosis, which could overwhelm hospitals.
Blinken lauds Mexico
US Secretary of State Blinken also met Mexico’s foreign minister Alicia Bárcena in Washington on 17 July ahead of the Apep meeting, extolling her government’s “great efforts” to reduce illegal immigration into the US. “We’ve seen in this moment at least, a dramatic decrease in the number of irregular migrants seeking to transit the border,” Blinken said.
Bárcena said Mexico had succeeded in efforts to “pull down the numbers”, increasing road and rail patrols and arresting and turning back many migrants long before they reach the US border. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency released figures on 15 July showing a decline of 50% over the preceding six weeks in ‘encounters’ between migrants and the authorities. In June there were 83,536 encounters, the lowest monthly level since January 2021.
It is doubtful whether the recent progress in reducing migration will translate into voter sentiment warming to the Democratic Party. The failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump (2017-2021) has boosted the chances of a victory for the Republican party in November’s elections. Trump continues to play on anti-immigrant sentiment and has spoken of militarising the border as well as sending troops into Mexico to combat drug trafficking organisations.
During the Republican National Convention (RNC) this week, US Senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, claimed “we are facing an invasion of our Southern Border”. A Republican party campaign video produced for the convention claims that “Every day Americans are dying – murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released”.
While acknowledging that undocumented migrants have committed crimes, fact checkers note that a study of Texas crime data concluded that undocumented immigrants had “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses”.