(23 Feb 2025)
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RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Puerto Cartí, Panamá – 22 February, 2025
++NIGHT SHOTS++
1. Venezuelan migrants check their phones as they spend the night in Puerto Cartí, where they plan to take a boat to Colombia after turning back from southern Mexico where they gave up hopes of reaching the U.S. amid President Trump’s crackdown on migration
2. Venezuelan migrants check their phones as they spend the night in Puerto Cartí
3. Migrants at a camp before boarding boats for a "reverse flow"
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Puerto Cartí, Panamá – 23February 2025
4. Various of migrants at dawn in camp
5. Migrants board a boat bound for Colombia in a reverse flow
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gardi Sugdub – 23 February, 2025
6. Luis Sanchez, center, sits with other Venezuelan migrants on a boat leaving Gardi Sugdub on Panama’s Caribbean coast, Sunday,, after giving up hopes of reaching the U.S. while in southern Mexico amid President Trump’s crackdown on migration
7. Close of migrants’ belongings
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Panama Coast – 23 February, 2025
8. Various of migrants on a boat bound for Colombia in a reverse flow
9. Travelling shot of boat with migrants heading to Colombia
10. Migrants getting off at dock
STORYLINE:
They once braved the jungles of the Darien Gap, trekking days along the perilous migrant passage dividing Colombia and Panama with a simple goal: Seek asylum in the U.S.
Now, boat-by-boat, those migrants – mainly from the Andean nations of Venezuela and Colombia – have given up after President Donald Trump’s crackdown on asylum, and are returning to the countries they once sought to escape.
A pair of those speed boats zipped through dense jungle-cloaked rivers near the Colombia-Panama border on Sunday, headed south.
Inside were dozens migrants clinging to their backpacks and shielding themselves from the water’s spray.
Many of those same people waited months, sometimes more than year in Mexico to get an asylum appointment in the U.S. through a Biden-era CBP One app, which ended under Trump.
It’s part of what authorities call a “reverse flow” of migrants.
The speed boats depart from a rural swathe of Panama and cross the seas in packs, hopping island to island until they reach the northern tip of Colombia.
The boats were part of a well oiled migrant smuggling machine, that once raked in money from the steady flow of hundreds of thousands of people headed north nearly a year ago.
The boat route, which crosses through the Indigenous Guna Yala lands, was once part of what smugglers called the VIP route, in which migrants paid more so they wouldn’t have to take the deadly trek through the Darien Gap.
But now that much of the Darien’s migrant smuggling industry has collapsed, smugglers are taking advantage of the reverse migration to charge steep costs to migrants – between $200 and $250 per person, including minors – for the boat rides.
Paying via Zelle and other money-transfer apps, for many it was the the last of their money, after having spent almost everything in pursuit of their American dream.
It’s unclear exactly how many people cross through the boat route daily, but for weeks, large groups, including several hundred from mainly Venezuela and Colombia, have been flocking to the area, where Indigenous laws govern.
They’re offered overnight stays and sea transfers.
That falls in line with figures offered by neighboring Costa Rica, which says it’s seen between 50 and 75 people crossing through their country going south every day.
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