NewsLatin AmericaMore than a thousand Venezuelans trapped in Panama ask Caracas for flights back home when the US denies their entry

More than a thousand Venezuelans trapped in Panama ask Caracas for flights back home when the US denies their entry

Three Venezuelan citizens cross the border into Colombia (archive image). – ENZO TOMASIELLO / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

Thousands of migrants, most of them Venezuelans, are trapped in Panama after the United States has announced new immigration policies with which to be able to expel all those who cross the border irregularly, for which they are asking for humanitarian flights to take them from back home.

The overwhelmed immigration authorities of Panama have recognized that they are not capable of managing this great migratory flow. This week alone, about a thousand have taken refuge in an improvised shelter that the Venezuelan Embassy has set up for those who arrive from Darien, but also from other Central American countries where they have heard the news that the United States will expel those who enter illegally.

“Unfortunately we were not prepared for a crisis of this magnitude,” admitted the director of the National Immigration Service, Samira Gozaine, as she passed through these facilities this Monday, reports the Panamanian newspaper ‘La Prensa’.

Two weeks ago, the United States announced that it will not allow the entry into its territory of those migrants who had entered Mexico and Panama irregularly, for which many decided to back down.

Penniless and trapped, most of these people now want to return to Venezuela. As there are no humanitarian flights and ticket prices are around 260 dollars, they have asked the Government of Caracas to charter several aircraft to take them back home.

However, despite the situation, the immigration services of Panama have reported that during the past weekend some 600 Venezuelans have been able to return to their country.

Considered one of the most dangerous places in Latin America, the Darien Gap, a wall of lush jungle that separates Panama from Colombia, is the only point where the Pan-American Highway is interrupted in its colossal undertaking of uniting Patagonia with the northernmost part of Alaska, in the United States.

Despite its inaccessibility through it, almost as many people have crossed in 2021 as in the previous ten years, when some 109,300 arrivals of migrants were registered not only from Venezuela and other countries on the continent, but also from other places as disparate as Sierra Leone , Uzbekistan, or Pakistan.

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