PANAMA CITY (AP) — With shattered dreams and empty hands, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants have been stranded in Panama’s capital looking for a way home after surviving crossing the Darien Gap, only to find a change in U.S. Politicians had closed the border to them.
Inside a government-converted warehouse in downtown Panama City, Venezuelans explained how they were devastated by the news as they emerged from the dense jungle separating Panama and Colombia.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced it would accept up to 24,000 Venezuelans at airports and turn back those attempting to cross the southwestern border into Mexico. The policy change closed the door to Venezuelan asylum seekers, many of whom had previously been paroled to the United States.
Jorge Lizcano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan who left Táchira with a group of 17 people including his brother, a cousin and a friend, said they reached a camp in Panama near the Caribbean coast when they got their first signal the crossing and immediately confronted news of the change.
“We turned on our cell phones to let the family know we were fine and … the only message we got was that they had closed the border, that there were no more options,” Lizcano said. “It destroyed us.”
They decided to trudge on, hoping that by the time they got out of the jungle the news would have changed. “At that moment we didn’t believe it, we thought it was a lie. We started calling relatives in the United States, in Chile, and they called us, yes, it was true. At that moment we hung our heads and cried.”
The group eventually made it to a United Nations camp.
Half of the group arrived at the shelter in the capital, managed by the Venezuelan consulate, on Monday. Lizcano’s brother, cousin and friend have already returned on flights to Venezuela. Lizacano was waiting for a humanitarian flight because he was out of money and hoping to spend the holidays with his wife and children.
The story goes on
“The only option is to go back to Venezuela and face reality… the good thing is that my mother, my father, my children are waiting there and I think that will help me to move on. We all lost what little we had.”
About 900 Venezuelans have returned from Panama on charter flights since the U.S. policy change, according to Panama’s National Immigration Service. The Venezuelan government charges $280 for the return flights, according to migrants interviewed at the shelter. Who cannot hope that non-governmental organizations will bear the costs.
According to government figures, around 206,000 migrants have crossed the Darien Gap this year, 170,000 of them Venezuelans.
The change in US policy was spurred by a wave of Venezuelans arriving at the US border, which this year placed them only behind Mexicans. In September, U.S. border officials reported nearly 34,000 encounters with Venezuelans, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
US and Mexican officials gave the first update on the program last Friday: 7,500 applications were being processed and the first 100 Venezuelans had been approved to fly. Biden administration officials said about 150 Venezuelans crossed the border from Mexico daily, up from about 1,200 before the policy was announced Oct. 12.
The first four Venezuelans to be released on parole in the United States arrived Saturday — two from Mexico, one from Guatemala, one from Peru — and hundreds more were approved to fly, the US Department of Homeland Security said. The program, which requires online pre-registration and where applicants have a sponsor in the United States, is similar to a program set up for Ukrainians earlier this year.
José Gregorio Baez, a 24-year-old Venezuelan from Carabobo, said he passed through Nicaragua when he heard about the policy change and continued on to the Guatemalan border when he finally gave up.
“I didn’t continue because it meant continuing to lose money because with the news that they closed there (the border) I decided it was better to go back and now I’m looking for a flight home .”