The famous route that was used by immigrants to reach the United States illegally has now become a ghost zone since Trump returned to power
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Something that Biden—whether due to incompetence or negligence—couldn't solve during his term, Trump solved in 6 months in the White House. Migrant traffic in the Darién region reached its historic minimum.
The sharp decline in the use of this route, used by Colombian, Venezuelan, and Haitian immigrants to reach the United States, coincides with a historic decrease in illegal crossings at the country's southwestern border in June.
Only 10 migrants traveled north through the Darién jungle in June, according to Migration Panama, an agency that monitors migratory movement in the region.
Inmigrantes transitan por el Darién en pleno gobierno de Biden. Immigrants now aren't even reaching the border.
The figure provided is the lowest in a month since the pandemic, when traffic practically stopped for health reasons, and since the early 2010s, when only a few hundred migrants took that route each month.
In times when Biden's administration allowed everyone to cross the border, almost 82,000 people crossed the Darién jungle in August 2023, which triggered an unprecedented crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border in the following weeks.
Overall, almost half a million people crossed this jungle throughout 2023. Now, with Trump in power, migrants are turning back before even reaching the border, confirmed Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin.
"The world is hearing our message: United States borders are closed to violators," McLaughlin told Axios, adding that this historic minimum represents a 99.98% drop compared to the traffic level during the previous administration.
Tricia McLaughin.
Panama celebrates this news.
Meanwhile, Panama's president, José Raúl Mulino, said at a press conference in March that his government is responsible for the drop in migratory flow, after ordering the closure of migrant transit centers along the Darién.
Even the villages along this jungle, where residents previously earned money by helping migrants, have become ghost towns, according to local media reports.
The sudden interruption of traffic has affected some indigenous communities that had left agriculture to transport migrants by boat through swamps and sell them supplies for the journey.
The Darién Gap is a 62-mile (100-kilometer) wide strip of jungle and swamp—without roads, with crocodiles, snakes, hostile terrain, and the presence of drug traffickers—located in southeastern Panama and was used by immigrants to reach the border between Mexico and the U.S.
