Migrants Flood Perilous Jungle Path to U.S.
immigration challenge for President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the months to come.
The thousands of Haitians who crossed the border into Texas last month, jolting the town of Del Rio and thrusting the Biden administration into a crisis, were just the leading edge of a much larger movement of migrants heading for the jungle and then the United States. People who had fled their troubled Caribbean nation for places as far south as Chile and Brazil began moving north months ago, hoping they would be welcomed by President Biden.
“We very well could be on the precipice of a historic displacement of people in the Americas toward the United States,” said Dan Restrepo, the former national security adviser for Latin America under President Barack Obama. “When one of the most impenetrable stretches of jungle in the world is no longer stopping people, it underscores that political borders, however enforced, won’t either.”
The Darién, which forms part of the Isthmus of Panama, is a narrow swath of land dividing the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Parts are so inaccessible that when engineers built the Pan-American Highway in the 1930s, linking Alaska to Argentina, only one section was left unfinished. That piece — 106 roadless kilometers of turbulent rivers, rugged mountains and venomous snakes — became known as the Darién Gap. Today, the journey through the gap is made more perilous by a criminal group and human traffickers who control the region, often extorting and sometimes sexually assaulting migrants.
Now, Necoclí, a small Colombian tourist town just at the mouth of the passage, has become a staging ground for migrants hoping to cross. Thousands of families bide their time in hostels, or in tents along the beach, waiting for their turn to be ferried by boat to the edge of the forest.
“I’m afraid,” said Ruth Alix, 30, who was traveling with her husband; their daughter, Farline, 3; and their son, Vladensky, 6 months.
The number of migrants who have made the journey so far this year is more than triple the previous annual record set in 2016. At one time, Cubans made up the majority of
migrants walking through the gap. Now, nearly all of the migrants are Haitians who settled in South America.
As many as 1,000 migrants cross into Panama through Darién every day, said Panama’s foreign minister, Erika Mouynes, an influx that has pushed border infrastructure to the brink. Her government has tried to provide food and medical care to those who survive the jungle passage, she said, but officials cannot keep up with demand.
“We’ve surpassed completely our capacity to support them,” she said, adding that she was “raising the alarm” about the need for a regional response to the crisis.
Each group that leaves is quickly replaced by another 1,000 or more migrants, creating a bottleneck that has transformed Necoclí. Sewers overflow in the street. Water has stopped flowing from some taps. Markets now sell kits made for crossing the Darién; they include boots, knives and baby slings.
At least 50 bodies have been found in the Darién this year alone, though estimates of the true number of dead are at least four times as high, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Sexual assault is also a risk: Doctors Without Borders has documented 245 cases in the Darién in the past five months, though the group believes the real number is far higher.
Ms. Alix said that her family had fled Haiti for French Guiana, on the
northern coast of South America, but found only poverty. Returning to Haiti was not an option, she said. The country is in tatters after a presidential assassination and an earthquake, its economy faltering and its streets haunted by gangs.
The only choice, Ms. Alix said, was the road north.
“We take this risk because we have children,” said Vladimy Damier, 29, Ms. Alix’s husband.
In recent years, a growing number of migrants had begun to brave the corridor, a journey that can take a week or more on foot. But after the pandemic, which hit South America particularly hard, that surge has become a flood. At least one in five of those who crossed this year were children, Panamanian officials said.
As the number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border grew, the Biden administration retreated from a more open approach embraced in the president’s first days in office to a tougher stance with a singular goal: deterring people from even attempting to enter the United States.
“If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned,” the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in September.
But the warning is unlikely to turn back the tens of thousands of Haitians who are already on the road.
On a recent morning, Ms. Alix and Mr. Damier woke their children before dawn. Their turn had come to board the boat that would take them to the edge of the jungle.
In the dark, Ms. Alix drew on her backpack and strapped Vladensky to her chest. In one hand she carried a pot of spaghetti, meant to sustain them. Her other hand reached out to Farline.
On the beach they joined a crowd of others. A dockworker handed a large life vest to Ms. Alix. She draped it over Farline’s small body and climbed into the boat. Aboard: 47 adults, 13 children, seven infants, all migrants.
Farline and her family spent the night in a tent at the edge of the jungle. In the morning, they set out before sunrise, alongside hundreds of others.
Soon, a vast plain became a towering forest. Farline clambered between trees, following her parents. Vladensky slept on his mother’s chest.
As the group crossed river after river, tired adults began to abandon their bags. They clambered up and then down a steep, muddy slope, only to stare up at the next one.
A woman in a leopard-print dress fainted. A man gave her water. Then they all rose, picked up their bags and began to walk.
Today, after all, was just day one in the Darién, and they had a long journey ahead.
Officials are raising the alarm about a new border crisis.