Darien Gap’s remote distance crosses Central America, and serves as a critical but dangerous direction for migrants desperate to embark on the adventure to North America. Many others fleeing poverty, persecution and violence feel that this is their only option. But even for those who suffer from it, the arrival in Panama brings new obstacles. Special correspondent Nadja Drost reports and joins Nick Schifrin in arguing.
Judy Woodruff:
Last night, we brought you the first of the reports of Special Envoy Nadja Drost and Bruno Federico, filmed before the pandemic, from one of the most damaging migratory routes and remote places on the planet, Darien Gap, a wild and lawless jungle land. Maximum impassable. on horseback between northern Colombia and Panama.
Tonight, with the Pulitzer Center, Nadja and Bruno report what they saw after their passage through the jungle and the immigration stagnation that so many migrants discovered after their ordeals.
Nadja Drost:
In the remote Darien region of eastern Panama, migrants and asylum seekers from around the world arrived in an indigenous village. This is the reason for endless confusion, as the Panamanian border police arranged equipment to pass by canoe.
Male (via a translator):
I’ll see you perceive the little English I know. I speak Spanish.
Nadja Drost:
To get to the nearby village, they have to pay $25 for a boat trip, but many of them have no cash now and payment is canceled.
They think it would be from here, only through the most damaging component of their long journey, the Darien Gap. It is a wild forest that covers the border region between Colombia and Panama.
Woman:
It’s very dangerous. It’s a matter of death.
Nadja Drost:
It is the first agreement reached through migrants who leave the trail. They expect this position to be some kind of shelter, but the truth is that attendance here is incredibly minimal.
Woman:
They give us all those things, flour and all that. They are — like, that’s why they give us. This isn’t cooked food. It’s raw food.
Nadja Drost:
Everything is fine. So there’s no stove?
Woman:
No stove, nothing.
Nadja Drost:
Usually, after several days, migrants board canoes to a camp in La Penita, registered with immigration officials.
Rosina and Collins Boateng from Ghana took 14 days to cross the Darien Gap with their 14-month baby twins and 4-year-old boy. By the end of the trek, they had no tent, no food and no money.
Rosina Boateng:
No, they gave us anything to cook this morning, but other than that, we want diapers, everything, clothes.
Nadja Drost:
On the outskirts of darien’s jungle, this small outpost fuses Panamanian and American security with border control. Panamanian migration officer Abel Abrego recorded biometric information.
Abel Abrego (via translator):
We take the main knowledge of all other immigrants.
Nadja Drost:
With the device and provided through the United States, Panama, in return, forwards the data to the United States. Panama’s head of migration, Samira Gozaine, said.
Samira Gozaine:
And then, when we collect the data, they can tell us or they can inform us if they are in their database.
Nadja Drost:
Last year, the Panamanian government counted nearly 24,000 migrants, adding 4,000 children from outside South America across the Darién Gap, 3 times more than in 2017.
On the next page, we have more African presence. We have Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Angola, as Congo.
Only after being checked can migrants get out of here, board the buses that take them to the border with Costa Rica. No more than a hundred a day are allowed. The United States also budgets the Panama border police, who are guilty of combating drug trafficking and organized crime in Darien.
They are now the first to respond to the migration crisis in Panama. While rape and theft are common on the runway in Panama City, border police leader Oriel Ortega was concerned.
They largely take our environment. They leave a lot of biological and inbiological waste, plastic bags, plastic bottles, discarded garments and backpacks.
Gedeao Makombo Nkosse (via translator):
It took me 14 days, with a lot of ambushes along the way. I’ve met bandits twice. The first one stole everything from me, and the second one stole all my family’s food.
Nadja Drost:
We met Gedeao Makombo Nkosse in Colombia, where he boarded a boat with his wife and three young men to succeed on the Darien Trail. Later, he told us that the jungle and its growing rivers had wraged.
Gedeao Makombo Nkosse (via translator):
As we crossed the river, I with my sons, all, me, my son and our two daughters fell into the water. And when we fell into the water, I — I — I controlled to save only two children. My daughter’s gone. I lost a 9-year-old girl like that.
Nadja Drost:
Makombo told us that he uprooted his circle of relatives in Angola because he was looking to give his young people a better future.
Later, while looking at a security guard where her daughter had been taken, she knew that locating her would not replace anything.
Gedeao Makombo Nkosse (via translator):
I’ve got nothing left. I don’t know how to move on now and move on with the rest of the family.
Samira Gozaine:
If they can’t do it, they don’t because they’re putting their lives at risk.
Oriel Ortega:
I don’t know why they insist on spending nine days in the jungle from Colombia to Panama.
Nadja Drost:
They insist on Panama’s immigration policy, said the holder of the Panamanian of the International Organization for Migration, Gonzalo Medina.
Gonzalo Medina (via translator):
The routes that migrants have established in the Darien forest are the result of the Panamanian government’s resolve to maintain a closed border.
Nadja Drost:
As long as migrants do not have the means to enter Panama legally, they will likely continue to rent smugglers to cross the border. Those who run out of cash depend on meagreArray The one whose hand reaches higher can obtain a blanket, rice or donated clothing.
Some migrants expect much more than others. Walid Ali fled the war in Yemen, where he said Houthi rebels attacked him for refusing to join them. He’d been in camp for 44 days.
Walid Ali (via translator):
I left a year ago. I didn’t expect to be welcomed. I know Yemen is forbidden.
Nadja Drost:
It was here, thousands of miles south of the United States, that Ali first met with an extension of America’s border and security priorities.
Yemen is not just the subject of the Trump administration’s 2017 ban. It has long been on a developing list of countries that the United States government considers to be of particular interest because it considers them to be generating or protective terrorist groups. Migrants from those countries are under more scrutiny.
Samira Gozaine:
Obviously, there are countries of migrants that are more established as a country from which a terrorist can come.
Nadja Drost:
In La Penita, those Pakistanis made bread in the meantime. Walid Ali said he understood why they were being evaluated and that he agreed with that.
Walid Ali:
This data is very much for everyone. We ourselves are satisfied with biometrics, because legally we are nobody. We don’t have any crime.
Nadja Drost:
But he said he’s disappointed with the time they’ll have to wait, probably two months.
While the migrants waited, they tried to call home. There’s a lot more to do. Some dance at night.
We asked Gozaine about the long waits of migrants from so-called special countries.
Who’s going to come out when they can leave?
Samira Gozaine:
If they’re not in the database, you’ll have to move to camp. So we have to take the time to make sure, maybe 30 days, maybe 60 days.
Nadja Drost:
And those intelligence officers who come to the camp to gather information, are Panamanians, or …
Samira Gozaine:
No. We don’t usually have that capability. Of course, we get a lot from the United States in this area.
Nadja Drost:
Ilhab Elhassan was legally living in the United States, but returned to Sudan. He left for political persecution and yet they were given here; 46 days later, I still didn’t know why he was in custody.
Ilhab Elhassan:
They play with our intellectual stability. And at some point, just to face them, what guess what? We’re not going to eat anymore. And we’re not going to drink.
Nadja Drost:
A few days after he and a small organization began a hunger strike, Elhassan, who was not among the migrants, decided to fill two buses bound for Costa Rica.
But the strategy seemed to have worked for Walid Ali. Your call was called. Late migrants say goodbye to their friends, not knowing when or if any of them would go to the United States.
Now, due to the pandemic, all migrants arriving in the camp are stranded and cannot continue their journey. These buses don’t paint anymore.
From The East Darien to Panama, in relation to Bruno Federico, I am Nadja Drost for the “PBS NewsHour”.
Judy Woodruff:
What a story.
Our Nick Schifrin recently spoke with Nadja to update the stage of the other people he met in those stories and how the pandemic affected his travels.
Nick Schifrin:
Nadja, report.
You were there about a year ago. What’s changed along these routes, especially with COVID?
Nadja Drost:
The coronavirus blocked that road, Nick.
As we know, planes have been blocked and migrants can no longer reach South America from Asia or Africa to head north.
But for the thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who were already heading to the United States when they hit the coronavirus, they … his adventure was well blocked. They can no longer continue their adventure to Costa Rica and the rest of Central America.
I spoke to a local who lives near this camp. There have been about 2,000 migrants stranded in the countryside since March, when Latin American countries began to define their borders. There have been coronavirus outbreaks at the migrant camp.
Nick Schifrin:
And, Nadja, I know I kept in touch with some of those characters whose lives, stories I’ve just seen. How are you?
Nadja Drost:
So, many of them are now in the U.S. They spend anywhere from three to seven months in ICE detention facilities. Many of them have been paroled and are able to continue their immigration cases outside of detention.
I had visited a couple of Cameroonians with whom we traveled through the jungle and who now live in Maryland, and are very satisfied in their new homes. They stay with the families. And they’re waiting for their new life to begin.
Of course, the pandemic has made it even more difficult. Many of them are waiting for permits to paint, which have been delayed with the pandemic.
And so, while they are incredibly grateful to be here and feel safe, they look forward to starting to paint and get to know the communities in which they live.
Nick Schifrin:
Nadja Drost, we’re lucky to have your report.
Thanks a lot.
Nadja Drost:
Thanks, Nick.
Judy Woodruff:
As a thing, we are. What an ordinary relationship.
And thanks to Nadja and Bruno Federico.
Bruno Federico is an Italian cameraman, editor and documentary filmmaker in Bogota.
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