MEXICO CITY (AP) — The jungle between Colombia and Panama, once nearly impenetrable to migrants heading north from Latin America, became a fast but still treacherous highway for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world this year.
Driven by economic crises, state repression and violence, migrants from China to Haiti decided to risk three days of deep mud, rushing rivers and bandits. Enterprising locals provided guides and porters, set up camp sites, and sold supplies to migrants. They used color-coded wristbands to track who paid for what.
Thanks to social media and Colombian organized crime, more than 506,000 migrants – nearly two-thirds Venezuelans – had crossed the Darien jungle by mid-December, double the 248,000 who set a record the previous year. Before last year, the record was just under 30,000 in 2016.
Dana Graber Ladek, Mexico chief of the United Nations' International Organization for Migration, said migration flows through the region this year were “historic numbers that we have never seen before.”
It wasn't just in Latin America.
FILE – A wooden refugee boat sits on a reef next to mangroves at Harry Harris Park in Tavernier, Florida, on Jan. 19, 2023. Growing numbers of Cuban and Haitian migrants have attempted to enter illegally across the Strait of Florida in recent months, the Keys Island chain and other parts of the state as inflation rises and economic conditions worsen in their home countries. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
FILE – A migrant points to Texas National Guardsmen standing behind barbed wire on the banks of the Rio Grande, seen from Matamoros, Mexico, May 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)
The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats to reach Europe has skyrocketed this year. According to the European Commission, more than 250,000 irregular entries were registered in 2023.
The number is up significantly compared to recent years, but is well below the level of the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than a million people landed in Europe, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Still, the surge has fueled anti-migrant sentiment and laid the foundation for tougher laws.
Earlier this month, the British government announced tough new immigration rules aimed at reducing the number of people who can emigrate to the UK each year by hundreds of thousands. Approved immigration to the UK set a record of almost 750,000 in 2022.
A week later, French opposition lawmakers rejected President Emmanuel Macron's immigration law without even debating it. The aim was to make it easier for France to expel foreigners deemed undesirable. Far-right politicians claimed the bill would have increased the number of migrants coming into the country, while migrant advocates said it threatened the rights of asylum seekers.
In Washington, the debate has largely shifted from efforts earlier this year to open new legal pathways to measures to keep migrants out, as Republicans seek to exploit the Biden administration's push for more aid to Ukraine, to tighten the southern border of the USA.
Earlier this year, the U.S. opened limited slots in January for Venezuelans — as well as Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians — to enter legally with a sponsor for two years, while those who didn't qualify were deported to Mexico. Their number initially fell slightly before rising sharply again.
FILE – Haitian migrants wade through water as they cross the Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama in hopes of reaching the U.S., May 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)
Venezuelan Alexander Mercado had only been back in his country for a month after losing his job in Peru before he and his partner decided to leave for the United States with their young son.
Venezuela's minimum wage at the time was about $4 a month, while 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of beef cost about $5, said Angelis Flores, his wife of 28 years.
“Imagine how someone survives on a salary of $4 a month,” she said.
Mercado, 27, and Flores were already on the move when the U.S. announced in September that it would grant temporary residency status to more than 470,000 Venezuelans already in the country. Weeks later, the Biden administration announced that it would resume deportation flights to the South American country.
FILE – Clothing and trash litter the path migrants have traveled across the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama in hopes of eventually reaching the United States, May 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)
Mercado and Flores hiked the beaten path through the jungle and managed to get through in three days. Flores and her son in particular became very ill. She believes they were infected by the contaminated water they drank along the way.
“There was a body lying in the middle of the river and the 'Zamuros', these black birds, were eating it and cutting it up… all of that was running in the river,” she said.
For Mercado and Flores, the journey accelerated as they left the jungle. In October, Panama and Costa Rica announced an agreement to expedite migrants through their countries. Panama bused migrants to a center in Costa Rica, where they were held until they could buy a bus ticket to Nicaragua.
Nicaragua also appeared to decide to send migrants through its territory at high speed. Mercado said they were bussed over within a day.
FILE – Migrants fill the roof of a northbound freight train in Irapuato, Mexico, September 23, 2023. Thousands more migrants were stranded in other parts of the country after Mexico's largest railway company said it had hitchhiked, citing so many migrants 60 freight trains stopped running that it became unsafe to move the trains. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)
After discovering that Nicaragua had lax visa requirements, Cubans and Haitians flocked to Nicaragua on charter flights and bought round-trip tickets they never planned. Citizens of African nations took circuitous connecting flights across Africa, Europe, and Latin America to arrive in Managua and from there travel overland to the United States, avoiding the Darien River.
In Honduras, authorities gave Mercado and Flores a pass that allowed them to travel through the country for five days.
Adam Isacson, a migration analyst with the Washington Office for Latin America, said that Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras grant migrants legal status while transiting through the countries, which have limited resources, and that the countries allow migrants to pass legally by allowing them to pass legally makes them less vulnerable to blackmail by authorities and smugglers.
Then there are Guatemala and Mexico, which Isacson called “we'll make a show of blocking you” countries trying to score points with the U.S. government.
For many, that meant spending money to hire smugglers to cross Guatemala and Mexico or subjecting themselves to repeated extortion attempts.
FILE – Migrants cross the Rio Grande on an inflatable mattress into the U.S. from Matamoros, Mexico, May 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)
Mercado didn't hire a smuggler and pay the price. It was “very difficult to get through Guatemala,” he said. “The police kept taking money.”
But that was just a taste of what was to come.
As Flores recently stood with her son in front of an emergency shelter in Mexico City, she talked about all the countries they had crossed.
“But they don't rob you as much, extort you and send you back as much as when you arrive here in Mexico,” she said. “This is where the real nightmare begins because as soon as you enter, a lot of money will be taken from you.”
Mexico's immigration system was thrown into chaos on March 27 when migrants held at a detention center in the border city of Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, set fire to mattresses in their cells in apparent protest. The highly flammable foam mattresses quickly filled the cell with thick smoke. The guards did not open the cell and 40 migrants died.
The immigration director was among several officials accused of crimes ranging from negligence to murder. During the review, the agency closed 33 of its smaller detention centers.
Unable to hold many migrants, Mexico instead scattered them across the country and used short, repeated detentions, each offering an opportunity for extortion, said Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization. Proponents called it “politica de desgaste,” or grueling politics.
Mercado and Flores made it to Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, where they were arrested, held overnight at an immigration facility in the border city of Reynosa and then flown 650 miles (1,046 kilometers) the next morning. south to Villahermosa.
There they were released, but without their cell phones, shoelaces and money. Mercado had to wait for his brother to send $100 so they could attempt to return to Mexico City via an indirect route that required travel by truck, motorcycle and even horseback.
They had just returned to Mexico City at the end of November. This time Mercado was unequivocal: They would not leave Mexico City until the U.S. government gave them an appointment to apply for asylum at a port of entry.
“It’s really hard to come back here,” he said. “If they manage to send me back, I don’t know what I would do.”
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AP writers María Verza in Mexico City, Juan Zamorano in Panama City and Renata Brito in Barcelona contributed to this report.