Human migration through the Darien Gap connecting Panama and Colombia has fallen by more than 90% when compared with the same time last year, according to Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“The numbers are fractional compared to where they were,” he said, adding that he asked a senior Panamanian official why there has been such a decrease in migration through the Darien Gap and received a one-word reply, “Trump.”
“The policies at the border, which are no longer catch-and-release, but … 100% detention and expulsion, [have] reached the world,” Bensman told The Daily Signal.
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, there was a slowing of migration through the gap as Mexico began cracking down on illegal immigration ahead of the U.S. election and as some Venezuelans stayed home to vote in the 2024 election in hopes strongman President Nicolás Maduro would not maintain control of the South American nation.
The Darien Gap is a 60-mile dense rain forest that connects Panama and Colombia. No roads run through the gap, meaning that migrants traveling north from South America have to cross the treacherous terrain on foot. Migrants who enter the gap and attempt to cross often do so without proper supplies or enough food and water. Sickness from drinking the river water or injuries in the Darien Gap can be deadly since the lack of roads provides little opportunity for rescue.
Human Rights Watch reports that Panamanian authorities found 124 bodies in the Darien Gap between the start of 2021 and the spring of 2023.
For years, migrants have crossed through the Darien Gap to make their way up through Central America to the U.S. border, but there was a significant surge in crossings during the Biden administration.
About 1.5 million migrants from 170 countries passed through the Darien Gap from 2021 to mid-2024, according to estimates by the Center for Immigration Studies. About 45% of those migrants did reach the U.S. border, Bensman said.
Bensman, who is also author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History,” has conducted extensive research on the migration crisis through the Darien Gap. In August, he spent two weeks on the Colombian and Panamanian sides of the gap. At that time, Bensman reported that Venezuelan and Haitian nationals were the two groups most commonly crossing through the gap, but the U.S. cannot vet nationals from either nation since the U.S. does not have access to the criminal records from these nations.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino promised to close the Darien Gap to the constant flow of immigration, and the Biden administration agreed to provide financial resources and even aircraft to repatriate individuals back to their home countries. The Biden administration reportedly provided Panama with about $6 million to close the gap, a drop in the bucket of the resources that Panama would need to successfully stop the flow north, according to Bensman.
Bensman predicts that as long as Trump is in office and maintains his current position on the border, crossings through the Darien Gap will remain low. But the border expert says Trump should take action to ensure that the flood of illegal immigration does not begin again after he leaves office.
Panama is not a wealthy nation, and “they are not going to spend their treasury money on our national security or border security. They’re not incentivized to do that,” he said. “So, we should be willing to pay for the Panamanians to have camps, detention centers, and airstrips and planes to fly people home from Panama.”
While the U.S. government must give Panama’s president what he needs to secure the Darien Gap, preventing illegal immigration through the gap starts with the U.S. border, according to Bensman.
“If the U.S. border is open,” he said, “it’s very difficult for all other countries south to shut [illegal immigration] down.”