Migrant crossings through once-overrun Darien Gap plummet 99%
By Jennie Taer
Migrant crossings through the once-overrun and dangerous Darien Gap have plummeted 99% under President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, The Post has learned.
Just 408 migrants were recorded traversing the treacherous Panamanian jungle path in February, compared to when crossings peaked at 37,166 in February 2024 under President Joe Biden, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Before-and-after photos of the Darien Gap show the small river port of Lajas Blancas — inundated by hordes of migrants just a year ago — now sitting empty as crossings plummet.
Migrants gather at a temporary camp in Lajas Blancas, Panama, after crossing the dangerous Darien Gap from Colombia in June 2024.
AP
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Facilities stand empty at a migrant reception center that once received hundreds of people daily after they crossed the Darien Gap on their way to the US.
Panamanian authorities were seeing an average of 16,400 migrants making the grueling trek each week at their peak in 2022, according to DHS.
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Massive tents previously packed with migrants now sit vacant, and a river where migrants would cross by foot is abnormally quiet, according to the photos taken by the Associated Press.
Just a few migrants from Venezuela, Angola and Nigeria were seen sleeping on the ground of the Lajas Blancas camp while being watched by cops.
President Trump
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President Trump’s crackdown at the southern border has led to a slowdown in migrant crossings through the Darien Gap.
REUTERS
And the aid groups have all left.
“Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, no one comes here anymore,” Venezuelan Hermanie Blanco, 33, who arrived in Panama days after Trump took office, told the outlet.
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“It’s deserted.”
Panama’s right-wing President José Raúl Mulino vowed to shut down the 70-mile stretch of jungle, and the number of migrants crossing there plummeted by 40% last year.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, migrant crossings along the route — the only land bridge between South and Central America — have all but dried up with the president’s border shutdown and mass deportation effort.
“Effectively, the border with Darien is closed,” Mulino declared last month.
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