PANAMA CITY – The authorities of Panama announced this Saturday the suspension of the transfer of migrants from shelters on the border with Colombia to one near the border with Costa Rica, while the buses dedicated to this are reviewed, after the registration of two accidents this month, one of them with a balance of at least 39 deaths.
“The National Migration Service (SNM) has decided to stop this transfer, this humanitarian corridor, while this procedure lasts that Transit is going to carry out tomorrow and that the competent authority certifies us that these buses are indeed in the state in which they must be there to continue transferring these people,” said the agency’s director, Samira Gozaine.
Panama receives irregular migrants who cross the Darién jungle, the natural border with Colombia, at migration reception stations (ERM), where they take their biometric data and offer them health and food assistance, after which they are transferred by bus, with a ticket paid for by themselves, to one of those facilities located in Chiriquí, on the border with Costa Rica, so that they can continue on their way to North America.
On that journey, an accident was recorded on February 15 that cost the lives of at least 38 migrants and the driver, and this Saturday another of those transports caught fire with no record of injuries or victims.
In a video released by the Immigration office, Gozaine explained this Saturday that “tomorrow” Sunday the Transit Authority will be in the province of Darién doing a new review of all the documentation to make sure that they continue to comply with the requirements that Transit is required (…) for these buses that already have their certificate of operation”.
“In these years that this humanitarian corridor has existed (about 8 years) more than 500,000 people (migrants) have moved through the Republic of Panama, that is almost 10,000 bus trips,” said Gozaine, who lamented the two accidents that have involved to migrants in the last week.
The president of the Association of Residents and Naturalized of the Republic of that country (Arena), Rafael Rodríguez, demanded this Saturday that the authorities review the transport, since, he said, the accidents this month are a “sample” of that they would not be “supervised”.
Thousands of irregular migrants from countries around the world arrive in Panama daily after crossing several South American countries and the dangerous Darien jungle, on their way to North America in search of better living conditions.
Last year, 248,284 passersby crossed the jungle, an unprecedented number led by the Venezuelan exodus that sparked a migration crisis in the region. This 2023, until February 15, at least 37,000 irregular migrants had crossed it, the majority being Ecuadorians and Haitians.
The National Migration Service explained that in Panama there is a “humanitarian corridor” that allows migrants to reach “their final destination” and that “irregular flows have been addressed from the humanitarian context” with a multidisciplinary team to prevent them from being victims. of organized crime.