Mulino: Return flights for migrants crossing the Darien will begin on August 20

• Panama’s president reiterated that these return flights of migrants are financed by the United States | Photo: EFE

On Tuesday, August 20, flights financed by the United States will begin to return migrants who cross the Darien jungle, the border between Panama and Colombia, announced Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino.

“On the 20th (of August the plan for the return of migrants will begin),” said Mulino in an interview with Univision Newssent to the press by the Presidency of Panama, from the Dominican Republic, where the Panamanian president was for the inauguration of Luis Abinader.

He added: “I am truly sorry, because I know why many of them are fleeing. The political crisis in Venezuela is strangling them.”

Mulino also reiterated that these return flights of migrants are financed by the United States “at no cost to Panama because (it is) its problem, the border is in Darien, not in Texas.”

“The bulk of the migrants are from Venezuela. It is a sad situation because they are human beings, to begin with. There are families torn apart, children of 5 or 6 years old whose parents have died on the journey and now we have them in shelters in Panama and we don’t know who they are or what their names are,” said Mulino.

He also indicated that within the migratory flow in Darien, the Panamanian authorities, who record the data of the migrants, have found people “linked to narcoterrorism (and) international terrorism.”

Last Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said that his country “is ready” to begin this August the agreement with Panama to return migrants who cross the Darien jungle via flights after holding a telephone meeting with his Panamanian counterpart, José Raúl Mulino, according to a statement from the Panamanian Presidency.

The agreement to return migrants

EFE

Panama and the United States signed an agreement on July 1 to return migrants who cross the Darien, the jungle bordering Colombia used daily as a migration route to reach North America, via flights financed by the North American country.

The agreement involves US support valued at $6 million.

According to the most recent information provided by Mulino on August 8, the return flights of migrants who have arrived in Panama after crossing the Darien jungle will be to Colombia, as a border country and from where these passers-by enter.

The goal is to reduce the flow of migrants through the dangerous Darien jungle, which has already been crossed by more than 216,000 migrants so far this year, most of them Venezuelan, while in all of 2023 there were more than 520,000, an unprecedented figure, according to official data from Panama.

Since July 3, Panama has progressively fenced off some 4.7 kilometers in Darien with “perimeter barriers” (barbed wire fences), where there were at least five unauthorized crossings or trails, to “channel” migrants through a “humanitarian corridor” and which, according to authorities, has reduced the migratory flow in July compared to the previous month.

Mulino has repeatedly insisted that the number of migrants passing through Darien could increase depending on how the situation develops after the July 28 elections in Venezuela, as the majority of migrants are from that Caribbean country.

Panama also offers migrants assistance and food in shelters located in Darien so that they can continue their journey on buses, paid for by the migrants, to Costa Rica.

With information from EFE

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