MEXICO CITY, 17 Dec: Once nearly impenetrable for migrants heading north from Latin America, the jungle between Colombia and Panama this year became a speedy but still treacherous highway for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
\nDriven by economic crises, government repression and violence, migrants from China to Haiti decided to risk three days of deep mud, rushing rivers and bandits. Enterprising locals offered guides and porters, set up campsites and sold supplies to migrants, using color-coded wristbands to track who had paid for what.
\nEnabled by social media and Colombian organized crime, more than 506,000 migrants \u2014 nearly two-thirds Venezuelans \u2014 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 barely 30,000 in 2016.
\nDana Graber Ladek, the Mexico chief for the United Nation\u2019s International Organization for Migration, said migration flows through the region this year were \u201chistoric numbers that we have never seen.\u201d
\nIt wasn\u2019t only in Latin America.
\nThe number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean or the Atlantic on small boats to reach Europe this year has surged. More than 250,000 irregular arrivals were registered in 2023, according to the European Commission.
\nA significant increase from recent years, the number remains well below levels seen in the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than 1 million people landed in Europe, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Still, the rise has fed anti-migrant sentiment and laid the groundwork for tougher legislation.
\nEarlier this month, the British government announced tough new immigration rules aimed at reducing the number of people able to move to the U.K. each year by hundreds of thousands. Authorized immigration to the U.K. set a record in 2022 with nearly 750,000.
\nA week later, French opposition lawmakers rejected an immigration bill from President Emmanuel Macron without even debating it. It had been intended to make it easier for France to expel foreigners considered undesirable. Far-right politicians alleged the bill would have increased the number of migrants coming to the country, while migrant advocates said it threatened the rights of asylum-seekers. AP<\/p>\n
In Washington, the debate has shifted from efforts early in the year to open new legal pathways largely toward measures to keep migrants out as Republicans try to take advantage of the Biden administration\u2019s push for more aid to Ukraine to tighten the U.S. southern border.
\nThe U.S. started the year opening limited spaces to Venezuelans \u2014 as well as Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians \u2014 in January to enter legally for two years with a sponsor, while expelling those who didn\u2019t qualify to Mexico. Their numbers dropped somewhat for a time before climbing again with renewed vigor.
\nVenezuelan 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 set off for the United States with their infant son.
\nVenezuela\u2019s minimum wage was the equivalent of about $4 a month then, while 2.2 pounds (a kilogram) of beef was about $5, said Angelis Flores, his 28-year-old wife.
\n\u201cImagine how someone with a salary of $4 a month survives,\u201d she said.
\nMercado, 27, and Flores were already on their way when in September the U.S. announced it was granting temporary legal status to more than 470,000 Venezuelans already in the country. Weeks later, the Biden administration said it was resuming deportation flights to the South American nation.
\nMercado and Flores hiked the well-trod trail through the jungle, managing to push through in three days. Flores and their son, in particular, got very sick. She believes they were infected by the contaminated water they drank along the way.
\n\u201cThere was a body in the middle of river and the \u2018zamuros\u2019, those black birds, were eating it and picking it apart \u2026 all of that was running in the river,\u201d she said.
\nFor Mercado and Flores, the journey accelerated once they left the jungle. In October, Panama and Costa Rica announced a deal to speed migrants across their countries. Panama bused migrants to a center in Costa Rica where they were held until they could buy a bus ticket to Nicaragua.
\nNicaragua also seemed to opt for speeding migrants through its territory. Mercado said they crossed on buses in a day.
\nAfter discovering that Nicaragua had lax visa requirements, Cubans and Haitians poured into Nicaragua on charter flights, purchasing roundtrip tickets they never intended. Citizens of African nations made circuitous series of connecting flights through Africa, Europe and Latin America to arrive in Managua to start travelling overland toward the United States, avoiding the Darien.
\nIn Honduras, Mercado and Flores were given a pass from authorities allowing them five days to transit the country.
\nAdam Isacson, an analyst tracking migration at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras grant migrants legal status while they\u2019re transiting the countries, which have limited resources, and by letting migrants pass legally the countries make them less vulnerable to extortion from authorities and smugglers.
\nThen there are Guatemala and Mexico, which Isacson called the \u201cwe\u2019re-going-to-make-a-show-of-blocking-you countries\u201d attempting to score points with the U.S. government.
\nFor many that has meant spending money to hire smugglers to cross Guatemala and Mexico, or exposing themselves to repeated extortion attempts.
\nMercado didn\u2019t hire a smuggler and paid the price. It was \u201cvery difficult to get through Guatemala,\u201d he said. \u201cThe police kept taking money.\u201d
\nBut that was just a taste of what was to come.
\nStanding outside a Mexico City shelter with their son on a recent afternoon, Flores recounted all of the countries they had traversed.
\n\u201cBut they don\u2019t rob you as much, extort you as much, send you back like when you arrive here to Mexico,\u201d she said. \u201cHere the real nightmare starts, because as soon as you enter they start taking a lot of your money.\u201d
\nMexico\u2019s immigration system was thrown into chaos on March 27, when migrants held in a detention center in the border city Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, set mattresses on fire inside their cell in apparent protest. The highly flammable foam mattresses filled the cell with thick smoke in an instant. Guards did not open the cell and 40 migrants died.
\nThe immigration agency\u2019s director was among several officials charged with crimes ranging from negligence to homicide. The agency closed 33 of its smaller detention centers while it conducted a review.
\nUnable to detain many migrants, Mexico instead circulated them around the country, using brief, repeat detentions, each an opportunity for extortion, said Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization. Advocates called it the \u201cpolitica de desgaste\u201d or wearing down policy.
\nMercado and Flores made it all the way to Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, where they were detained, held for a night in an immigration facility in the border city of Reynosa and then flown the next morning 650 miles (1046 kilometers) south to Villahermosa.
\nThere they were released, but without their cell phones, shoelaces and money. Mercado had to wait for his brother to send $100 so they could start trying to make their way back to Mexico City through an indirect route that required them to travel by truck, motorbike and even horse.
\nIn late November, they had just made it back to Mexico City again. This time Mercado was unequivocal: They would not leave Mexico City until the U.S. government gave them an appointment to request asylum at a border port of entry.
\n\u201cIt is really hard to make it back here again,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they manage to send me back again I don\u2019t know what I would do.\u201d AP<\/p>\n
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