President-elect aims to shut down Panama’s busy migration route

Panama CITY — Panama is on the verge of a dramatic change to its immigration policy that could reverberate from the dense Darien jungle to the US border.

President-elect José Raúl mulino says he will shut down a migration route used by more than 500,000 people last year. Until now, Panama has helped speedily bus the migrants across its territory so they can continue their journey north.

Whether mulino is able to reduce migration through a sparsely populated region with little government presence remains to be seen, experts say.

“Panama and our Darien are not a transit route. It is our border,” mulino said after his victory with 34 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election was formalized Thursday evening. He will take over as president on July 1.

As he had suggested during his campaign, the 64-year-old lawyer and former security minister said he would try to end “the Darien odyssey that does not have a reason to exist.”

The migrant route through the narrow isthmus grew exponentially in popularity in recent years with the help of organized crime in Colombia, making it an affordable, if dangerous, route for hundreds of thousands.

It grew as countries like mexico, under pressure from the US government, imposed visa restrictions on various nationalities including Venezuelans and just this week Peruvians in an attempt to stop migrants flying into the country just to continue on to the US border.

But masses of people took the challenge and set out on foot through the jungle-clad Colombian-Panamanian border. a crossing that initially could take a week or more eventually was whittled down to two or three days as the path became more established and entrepreneurial locals established a range of support services.

It remains a risky route, however. Reports of sexual assaults have continued to rise, some migrants are killed by bandits in robberies and others drown trying to cross rushing rivers.

Even so, some 147,000 migrants have already entered Panama through Darien this year.

“People migrate for many reasons and frequently don’t have safe, orderly, and legal ways to do it,” said Giuseppe loprete, chief of mission in Panama for the Un’s International Organization for Immigration. “when the legal routes are not accessible, migrants run the risk of turning to criminal networks, traffickers, and dangerous routes, tricked by disinformation.”

Loprete said the Un agency’s representatives in Panama would meet with mulino’s team once its members are named to learn the specifics of the president’s plans.

If mulino could be even partially effective, it could produce a notable, but likely temporary, impact. as with the visa restrictions that unintentionally steered migrants to the overland route through Panama, if the factors pushing migrants to leave their countries remain they will find other routes.

In a local radio interview Thursday, mulino said the idea of shutting down the migration flow is more philosophical than a physical obstacle.

“Because when we start to deport people here in an immediate deportation plan the interest for sneaking through Panama will decrease,” he said. By the time the fourth plane loaded with migrants takes off, “I assure you they are going to say that going through Panama is not attractive because they are deporting you.”