Following days of delays brought on by a protest by carriers against the authorities in that part of Colombia, thousands of migrants are now waiting to board boats that would take them to the Darien jungle.
Following the restoration of the maritime transport service, which had been disrupted the previous week and left thousands of migrants stranded for days, roughly 420 adults and children in a small Colombian town on the Caribbean Sea shore stayed on the beaches on Monday, waiting for a ticket to board a boat and enter the treacherous Darien jungle.
According to Johann Wachter Espitia, the administration secretary of Necoclí, the Associated Press, over 3,000 migrants have departed the town since Friday.
On that day, the authorities and shipping companies came to an agreement to halt a protest in which the corporations requested the arrest of two captains who were allegedly involved in smuggling migrants. As a result, the transfer of migrants by boat was resumed.
Necoclí and neighboring Colombian towns have developed into frequent hubs for thousands of migrants attempting to enter the United States by way of the perilous Darien jungle.
According to a study released Monday by Panamanian Security Minister Juan Pino, as of the first few days of March, 73,426 people—mostly Venezuelans—had entered the so-called Darien Gap, 20,400 more than during the same period previous year.
Typically, they board boats owned by tourism businesses in Necoclí, and after traveling over an hour across open waters, they reach Acandí, the place where the perilous adventure through the jungle commences.
The town, home to 38,000 people, has a collapse in its health system, public service accessibility, and housing capacity whenever the migrant flow surges or thousands of migrants are imprisoned for unknown reasons. As the number of migrants rises, more of them decide to spend the night on the beaches in plastic tents or on the ground.
Dozens of migrants frequently stay in that town in order to gather enough cash to pay at least $300 in order to cross the Darien. At least 80 of the 420 individuals still alive, according to the Mayor’s Office, are youngsters.
3,000 people were incarcerated last week, the mayor’s office reported. Carlos Camargo, the Ombudsman, did, however, go so far as to alert local media to the possibility that there were as many as 8,000.
The maritime businesses, who are permitted to transport both tourists and migrants, protested when authorities apprehended two captains who were allegedly trafficking 151 migrants in two boats under dubious security conditions.
The people who were apprehended allegedly asked each migrant for between $140 and $300 in exchange for sending them to Acandí via water. Assigned to two tourist maritime transport businesses, the Prosecutor’s Office claimed that they planned to utilize this lawful activity as a cover for the illegal activity of smuggling migrants.
Despite the shipping companies’ protests about the arrests, the Necoclí government secretary stated that as officials, they are unable to guarantee that there won’t be any more arrests. They did, however, come to an understanding that shipping firms would have to comply with some immigration procedures in order to lawfully carry migrants.
This suggests that shipping companies check that migrants are registered in a government application called “Safe Transit,” where they are required to provide personal information as part of the registration process for migrants entering the nation, before boarding them.
According to official estimates from Panama, over 520,000 migrants passed through the Darién in 2023, setting a record for the number of people displaced through that region. The majority were from Colombia, China, Haiti, Venezuela, and Ecuador.
The governments of Costa Rica, the United States, Panama, Colombia, and Panama are attempting to come up with strategies to deal with this situation as a regional humanitarian and law enforcement issue.
The director general of Panama’s border police, Jorge Luis Gobea, announced on Monday that four individuals had been apprehended in Darien, from whom drugs, weapons, and a “substantial” quantity of cash had been taken.
Gobea said of “anyone who is dedicated to smuggling or exploiting migrants across the country”: “It is a tireless task that we are carrying out with intelligence work, we are in coordination with the Colombian authorities to uncover the members of these networks.”
Authorities also released a report on violent occurrences that occurred over the weekend, including the vandalism of a temporary reception center in Darien by a group of migrants. 45 foreign nationals were consequently taken into custody and may be charged with crimes for the damages.
Human Rights Watch – an international organization, has reported that the Clan del Golfo, which is thought to be the primary drug trafficking gang operating in Colombia, controls the land and maritime routes that migrants can take in order to travel to the United States.
