Panama accuses Colombian drug cartel of controlling migrant smuggling in Darien

June 3, 2023

The head of the Panamanian border police (Senafront) on Friday accused the Colombian drug cartel “Clan del Golfo” of controlling the trafficking of migrants who transit through the dangerous Darien jungle, which straddles the border between the two countries. .

“Currently, all migrant smuggling (in the Darien), according to reports from our intelligence services, is managed, organized and developed by the narco-terrorist organization Clan del Golfo, on the Colombian side,” he told the urges Senafront leader Oriel Ortega, presenting an operation aimed at combating criminals who ransom migrants.

“We found Colombians who were robbing migrants, we found Colombians who were making paths to avoid those where our patrols are in order to avoid checks,” Ortega insisted.

The Clan del Golfo, which has a militia of around 9,000 heavily armed men, extends its tentacles in around thirty countries and controls nearly half of the Colombian traffic in cocaine, the world’s largest producer.

The “Operation Shock” launched Friday by Panama “directly targets transnational criminal action. We invite Colombia to do the same on its side”, said the head of Senafront.

During the first five months of the year, a record of more than 166,000 migrants passed through the Darien to reach the United States, said Panamanian Minister of the Interior Juan Manuel Pino.

“We absolutely cannot accept that these people are attacked, molested, on Panamanian territory (…) We will do everything to bring them our protection”, declared the minister to the press invited to attend the launch of the operation.

The Darien has become a migration corridor between South America and the United States via Central America.

This virgin forest of 575,000 hectares is devoid of any road network, infested with mosquitoes and snakes, dotted with ravines and criminal gangs raging there.

More than 60 migrants have died during the crossing of the jungle since the beginning of the year, according to the Minister of the Interior. The floods of the current rainy season have claimed a dozen lives in a week and a half, he said.

The director of Panamanian migration services Samira Gozaine, for her part, expressed concern about the growing number of migrant children “who die on the way”, without however advancing a figure.

The International Committee of the Red Cross recently built in the Darien a sepulcher of a hundred funerary niches intended to receive the bodies of unidentified migrants who died trying to cross the jungle.