Migrants in Panama hope to continue on to the U.S.

Panama has recently moved hundreds of migrants stranded within its borders to its Northern border with Costa Rica. The small Central American country has continued to receive new waves of migrants who are encouraged to leave their homes, in part, because of the new administration in the US. The migrants, many of them Haitians with young children, have been moved by buses from a camp in San Vicente, in the Darien province to the South, bordering Colombia, to another migrant reception post in Chiriqui province in the North, bordering Costa Rica. The National Migration Service told The Associated Press that since January 29 some 551 migrants have left Darien and moved to the border with Costa Rica. That route had been suspended after Panama reported the first cases of the coronavirus in March 2020 and closed its borders to contain the pandemic. Meanwhile, many migrants in San Vicente - which opened its doors in September 2020 - had traversed the dangerous Darien jungle in the last few days or weeks. Others in the San Vicente camp recently completed quarantine or were tested for COVID-19 in other camps. As of Tuesday, there were 375 migrants in tents and housing units with drinking water which were set up with the help of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Some 1,000 people remain in Darien, 276 of whom arrived Monday night after the dangerous days-long journey. According to local authorities and complaints from the migrants themselves, gangs of assailants, rapists, and human and drug traffickers operate freely inside the jungle. "Thieves took my backpack with the passports here in Panama," said Wisnel Olly, a 41-year-old Haitian migrant who recently arrived in San Vicente with his wife Bien Aimé, and their four-month-old twin boys Robens and Robenson, who were born in Chile, where the couple lived for two years. Idiam Osorio, a technical specialist of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), feels one of the reasons pushing the flow of migrants northward is linked to the change of government in the United States. She said they have to regularly move migrants between camps to prevent contagions. Panama announced the reopening of its land borders on January 29, prompting hundreds of migrants to immediately cross the porous Colombian-Panamanian border. Some 800 more migrants are expected to cross the Darien from Colombia in the coming days, according to Panama's National Border Service.

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Migrants in Panama hope to continue on to the U.S.

Panama has recently moved hundreds of migrants stranded within its borders to its Northern border with Costa Rica.

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