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Boat operators suspended migrant crossings after Colombia arrested two captains. The Biden administration has called on Colombia to do more to stem the flow of others heading toward the U. S. border.
By Julie Turkewitz
Migration to the U. S. through the dangerous jungle pass known as the Darien Gap has stopped, at least temporarily, following the arrest of two boat captains who worked for corporations that play a critical role in transporting migrants into the jungle.
According to the mayor of Necoclí, shipping corporations have suspended the crossing of migrants from two northern Colombian airports, Necoclí and Turbo, to the front of the Darién forest, leaving some 3,000 migrants stranded in those communities.
In fact, Colombian law enforcement action in the region will be heavily monitored by U. S. officials: The Biden administration has been pressuring Colombia for months to redouble its efforts to save the people of the Darien as a path to the United States.
The sea direction is the main access route to the Darien Gap, a strip of land connecting South and North America that was once rarely traversed, but in recent years has been one of the largest and most active migratory directions in the hemisphere.
Nearly a million people have crossed the Darien since 2021, according to the government at the end of the Panama adventure, helping to fuel an immigration crisis in the United States.
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