Colombia Rejects Closing Darien Gap Border with Panama

Colombia will not close its border with Panama along the Darien Gap — the dense, dangerous jungle that has become a major route for migration toward the United States said Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo. The comments came as Jose Raul Mulino, elected as Panama’s new president on May 5, promised to shut down the Darien Gap while on the campaign trail.  “It is a conversation that should continue, but Colombia obviously would not agree with closing borders,” Murillo said in an interview in Bogota with Newsroom Panama. “On the contrary, what we have to offer is more humanitarian outlets for this population that crosses through that area,” he added.  Panama’s Mulino earlier this month promised to deport migrants passing through the jungle from Colombia. “Our Darien is not a transit route, no sir. It is our border,” the right-wing president-elect said.

Colombia’s Murillo added that the government was seeking to arrange a meeting with Mulino before his July 1 inauguration to discuss migration. He said he was confident Mulino’s comments were made “in the heat of the campaign.” “People are going to move and what we have to guarantee is that this mobility is safe, that it is a regular mobility and that people do not fall into the hands” of criminals, he said. Migrants crossing the Darien Gap face treacherous terrain, wild animals and violent criminal gangs that extort, kidnap and abuse them.  In 2023, a record 520,000 people — most of them Venezuelans — crossed through the gap. About 120,000 of them were children. In 2022, 62 people died on the trek. The provisional count for 2023 stands at 34. While most of those crossing the Darien Gap are fleeing an economic crisis in Venezuela, migrants from Africa and Asia also use the remote forest in their bids to reach the United States.