President of Panama José Raúl Mulino declared U.S.-bound migrants passing through his country an “immense global problem” at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, urging the international community to help.
Mulino, who took office in July, dedicated much of his address to the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle trail that Panama shares with neighboring Colombia, used by hundreds of thousands of migrants in recent years to reach the United States. The Darién jungle is the only land bridge that connects South and Central America.
The Panamanian president declared that, as a result of the Darién migrant flow, the “new United States border” is in Panama. Mulino also proclaimed that, unlike previous administrations, he will use any international venue to demand a “shared effort” to stop illegal migration and fight organized crime that profits from migrants through human and drug trafficking.
“Today Panama faces a huge problem due to its strategic location: illegal immigration through the Darién jungle, which is being used as a key for hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been fleeing from serious economic, political and social problems in search of the so-called American dream,” Mulino said.
The Panamanian president stated that more than 500,000 migrants passed through the Darién Gap in 2023 and asserted that the migrant flow is led by “criminal organizations, based in neighboring countries, which receive cursed money to profit from the need and hope of thousands of human beings.”
Mulino stressed that, while he understands the hard decision of migrating to flee from misery and oppression, Panama already has enough social and financial problems to face as a nation and does not have the resources to solve the migrant crisis on his own. The Panamanian president also stressed that the flow of migrants through its territory brings social, human, and environmental costs to its country, as migrants leave trash behind — and, more tragically, “decomposing corpses.”
“Illegal immigration through Panama is part of a huge global problem and it should be here, at the United Nations, that it should occupy a place of importance in its agenda,” Mulino said.
Mulino said he knew the Darién Gap “very well” thanks to his tenure as security minister in which he led Panama’s fight against narco-guerrillas a decade ago. He posited that there is an immense difference between analyzing illegal migration from an office and witnessing it in the flesh. The president stressed that seeing children orphaned by the inclemency of the jungle trail “would touch the soul of the coldest analyst who studies these issues from the comfort of an office.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to see the magnitude of what is happening, because we feel that we do not have all the international support we need to face a situation that is so distressing from a humanitarian point of view,” Mulino implored, “so costly in financial terms, so risky for our security, and so alarming because of the environmental devastation that we are being left with.”
Mulino described political instability as one of the causes of mass migration and identified Venezuela as a “concrete example.” Mulino, citing U.N. statistics, said that nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled from their country, a number he described as a “real migratory tragedy to which international organizations have not given a convincing and credible response over the years.”
Mulino called for international organizations to act “energetically against manifestly anti-democratic attitudes and behavior” in light of the Venezuelan regime’s July 28 sham presidential election, which dictator Nicolás Maduro fraudulently claims he “won.” Mulino said that it is “very difficult” to talk about health and the environment while Venezuela faces its migrant crisis.
“What sustainable regional development can we talk about in the face of this never-ending political crisis affecting the entire continent?” he asked. “I do not pretend to disguise my speech as natural green when there is spilled blood of immigrants who risk their lives in our jungle looking for a dream of freedom.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
