Migrant crossings through the once-overrun Darien Gap plummet 99 percent under Trump’s border crackdown, The New York Post has learned.
The Darien Gap is (was) an imposing obstacle on one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes. The remote, roadless crossing on the border between Colombia and Panama consists of more than sixty miles of dense rain forest, steep mountains, and vast swamps. It is the only overland path connecting Central and South America. Over the past few years, it has become a leading transit point for migrants in search of work and safety in the United States, as authorities have cracked down on other routes by air and sea.
Just 408 migrants were recorded traversing the treacherous Panamanian jungle path in February, compared to when crossings peaked at 37,166 in February 2024 under President Joe Biden, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Before-and-after photos of the Darien Gap show the small river port of Lajas Blancas — inundated by hordes of migrants just a year ago — now sitting empty as crossings plummet.
According to the Post, massive tents previously packed with migrants now sit vacant, and a river where migrants would cross by foot is abnormally quiet, according to the photos taken by the Associated Press. Just a few migrants from Venezuela, Angola, and Nigeria were seen sleeping on the ground of the Lajas Blancas camp while being watched by cops. And the aid groups have all left.
“Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, no one comes here anymore,” Venezuelan Hermanie Blanco, who arrived in Panama days after Trump took office, told the outlet.
“It’s Desolate”
Panama’s right-wing President José Raúl Mulino vowed to shut down the 70-mile stretch of jungle, and the number of migrants crossing there plummeted by 40 percent last year.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, migrant crossings along the route — the only land bridge between South and Central America — have all but dried up with the president’s border shutdown and mass deportation effort.
“Effectively, the border with Darien is closed,” Mulino declared last month.
A ‘Reverse Flow’ of Migrants
Back in February, after President Donald Trump’s crackdown on asylum, migrants – mainly from the Andean nations of Venezuela and Colombia—gave up and are returning to the countries they once sought to escape.
Those migrants using speedboats zipped through dense jungle-cloaked rivers near the Colombia-Panama border, headed south. It’s part of what authorities call a “reverse flow” of migrants.
The speedboats departed from a rural swathe of Panama and crossed the seas in packs, hopping from island to island until they reached the northern tip of Colombia. Some of the migrants waited for their boat back to Colombia said to AP they refused to return to Venezuela after the country’s recent elections, which have fueled democratic alarm and violence.
They’d rather struggle in the same economic and legal precarity they faced for years in other countries, which have long pleaded with the international community for more funds to take on the migratory crisis.
“There’s no way I’m going back to Venezuela. There are many of us that don’t want to go back. They are going to Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. Just like before,” said Celia Alcala a Venezuelan immigrant.
