Biden’s human smuggling superhighway roars through Panama’s Darién Gap
New report from Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies
On Todd Bensman’s recent trip to the Darién Gap he learned that the Biden administration has transformed the human smuggling passage into a roaring superhighway “to make it shorter, faster, safer” for illegal migration, he told the Sam Sorbo Show.
Over the past two years, Bensman said, Mayorkas and Blinken “went down there over, and over, and over again” to pressure Panama into shortening the land routes and opening sea and river routes “so that people wouldn’t be murdered as much,” Bensman said, “and more of them would want to come.”
Bensman found that U.S. Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN and Homeland Security Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS used diplomatic pressure to create what they call “safe, orderly and humane” passage through the Darién Gap, turning what was a dangerous 7- to 10-day trek into “a two-day camping trip.”
“They’ve put all kinds of investment into NGOs and UN agencies down there to open it, to keep it open. To widen it. To allow the most people possible to get through there that they could possibly orchestrate,” Bensman said.
But the new president of Panama, JOSÉ RAÚL MULINO, who took office on July 1, wants to stop illegal migration through his country. “All of a sudden,” Bensman said, “you have a [new] government down there saying, hey, we want to close it all down. Tear up everything you’ve spent the last two years doing.”
Given its geography, Panama’s Darién Gap is an obvious choke point for potentially cutting off illegal migration. “That’s where the majority of the people on the FBI’s terrorism watch list, that we caught at our border, came through — 380, very historic numbers,” Bensman said.
But despite a memorandum of understanding with Panama signed on July 1 by Mayorkas, promising U.S. assistance with repatriation flights to remove and deter migrants, Bensman found that U.S. help has not been forthcoming. From his interviews with Panamanian government officials, Bensman learned the Biden Harris administration has shown no signs of shutting down what he calls “a major national security and public safety threat” to the United States. ”So now the Panamanians are out there all on their own,” Bensman said. “They’ve got all these preparations in place, and we left them hanging.”
Read his full report: https://cis.org/Report/Progress-Report-Has-Panama-Closed-Notorious-Darien-Gap-Mass-Migration-Route-US-Border