Colombian authorities express concern over Mulino’s proposal to close Darien

The Mayor of Necoclí, a municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia on the border with Panama, expressed its “deep concern” over the statements made by the president-elect of that country, José Raúl Mulino, regarding the possibility of closing the passage through the Darién jungle.

Mulino recently said that he will close Darién to stop migration. “We are going to close Darién and we are going to repatriate all these people accordingly,” he said.

Following these statements, the Mayor of Necoclí said that “measures such as those contemplated by the new Government of Panama might further exacerbate the migratory flow” towards the Colombian border territory.

In a statement, the Mayor’s Office said that “just two months ago, we experienced a critical situation with a backlog of approximately 1,000 migrants, which generated chaos in our municipality due to our limited capacity to handle such a large population.”

65,000 migrants passed through Necoclí in 2024

So far in 2024, nearly 65,000 migrants have passed through Necoclí on their migration route, according to figures from the Mayor’s Office, which represents an increase of more than 20,000 people compared to the same period last year.

In response, the authorities made “an urgent call to the Government to address this crisis in a coordinated and articulated manner,” and recalled that the migration crisis “cannot fall solely on Necoclí,” which has “obvious limitations, both budgetary and logistical.”

So far this year, 132,320 migrants have crossed the dangerous Darien jungle, the majority coming from Venezuela (84,031), followed by Ecuador (10,280) and Haiti (8,597).

In 2023, more than 520,000 people crossed this lush jungle, a historic figure that doubled the 248,000 people in transit in 2022, according to statistics from the Panamanian authorities.

*With information from EFE*