Panama begins repatriating migrants on U.S.-funded flights

Panama will begin deporting illegal immigrants on Tuesday via U.S.-funded flights.

The move comes less than two months after José Raúl Mulino was sworn in as Panama’s president.

Mulino campaigned on a promise to “close” the Darién Gap, a dangerous stretch of jungle that last year saw more than half a million migrants travel north from South America toward Africa.

The Biden administration said it had agreed to pay for the flights as part of an effort to discourage illegal immigration.

Under the agreement, signed jointly by Panama’s foreign minister and US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the US pledged $6m (£4.6m) in aid to Panama to provide equipment, transport and logistics to “repatriate foreign nationals who do not have a legal basis to remain in Panama”.

Immigration is a hot topic ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border is being closely monitored.

The agreement with Panama is intended to reduce the number of people arriving at the U.S. border by stopping illegal immigrants from moving further south.

The Darien Pass is a jungle that straddles the border between Colombia and Panama and is a natural bottleneck for traveling from South America to North America.

In 2023, an estimated 520,000 people made the dangerous journey on foot, many of whom had to pay criminal gangs who targeted people crossing the border.

President Mulino has pledged to reduce the number of migrants passing through Panama, calling their plight “sad.”

“Most of them are from Venezuela,” he explained. “They are human beings… Families have been torn apart, there are children as young as five or six, whose parents died crossing. We don’t even know who they are or what their names are.”

The president had previously said the flights would first take the migrants to Colombia, the country from which they entered Panama.

It is not yet clear whether flights will be organized to repatriate them from Colombia.

Venezuelans make up the largest group of migrants crossing the Darien Pass, according to Panamanian government data, followed by Colombians, Ecuadorians and Haitians.

There are widespread concerns in the region that the number of people fleeing Venezuela could increase in the coming months if the political crisis sparked by a disputed election result is not resolved.

Before the election, polls showed that large numbers of Venezuelans planned to emigrate if President Nicolas Maduro won.

Tensions have been high since he was declared the winner by the government-dominated National Electoral Council, a result the opposition says was fraudulent and contested by the United States, the European Union and many Latin American countries.

Panamanian President Jose Mourinho offered Maduro “safe passage” earlier this month so that the Venezuelan leader could travel to a third country, but Maduro rejected the offer and warned his Panamanian counterpart not to “mess with” Venezuela.