Temporary suspension of migrant bus transfers

Panama announced  Saturday the suspension of the transfer of migrants from shelters on the border with Colombia to one near the border with Costa Rica,  after the registration of two accidents this month, one of with at least 39 deaths.

“The National Migration Service (SNM) has decided to stop this transfer, this humanitarian corridor, while the procedure that Transit is going to carry out lasts and that the competent authority certifies us that indeed these buses are in the state in which they must be there to continue transferring these people,” said the agency’s director, Samira Gozaine.

Panama receives irregular migrants who cross the Darien jungle, the natural border with Colombia, in immigration reception stations (ERM), where they take their biometric data and offer them health and food assistance, after which they are transferred by bus, with a ticket paid for by themselves, to one of these facilities located in Chiriquí, on the border with Costa Rica, so that they continue on their way to North America.

On that journey, an accident was recorded on February 15 that cost the lives of at least 38 migrants and the driver, and this Saturday another of those transports caught fire with no record of injuries or victims.

In a video released by the Immigration office, Gozaine explained this Saturday that ” Sunday, the Transit Authority in Darién doing a new review of all the documentation to make sure that they continue to meet the requirements demanded by the Transit “.

“In the 8 years that this humanitarian corridor has existed) more than 500,000 migrants have moved through Panama, that is almost 10,000 bus trips,” said Gozaine, who lamented the two accidents that have involved migrants in the last week.

Last year, 248,284 passersby crossed the Darien jungle, an unprecedented number.