Bogota: Colombia will not close its border with Panama through the Darien Gap – a dense, dangerous jungle that has become a major migration route to the United States – Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told AFP on Saturday.
The comments came as Panama’s new president, Jose Raul Mulino, pledged to close the Darien loophole at a campaign rally on May 5.
“Instead, what we offer is a more humane point of contact for this population through the region,” he said.
Panama’s Mulino promised to deport migrants who crossed the jungle into Colombia earlier this month.
“Our Darien is not a transit line, sir. This is our border,” he said.
Colombia’s Murillo said the government wants to discuss migration with Mulino before his July 1 inauguration.
He said he believed Mulino’s comments were made “in the heat of the campaign”.
Migrants crossing the Darien Gap face treacherous terrain, wild animals and criminal gangs who commit rape, kidnapping and torture.
In 2023, a record 520,000 people, mostly Venezuelans, crossed the chasm. About 120,000 of them are children.
In 2022, 62 people will die on the road. The provisional number for 2023 is 34.
While many cross the Darien Gap to escape the economic crisis in Venezuela, migrants from Africa and Asia are using the remote jungle to bid for the United States.
Murillo also said Colombia wants to train the Haitian National Police in anti-piracy.
The goal is to study at Columbia,” he said.
A Kenyan-led multinational mission supported by the United Nations and the United States will soon be sent to the Caribbean to help the powerful criminal gangs that control much of the capital.
The foreign minister also said that the Colombian government “has been working hard” in an effort to open an embassy in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
President Gustavo Petro, a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made the announcement on Wednesday.
Colombia cuts ties with Israel amid civilian deaths in Israel-Hamas war, calls Petro Netanyahu “genocide”
