Panama Pushes Forward with Deportation Flights to China, India, and Surrounding Countries
The US collaboration with Panama serves to deter unlawful migration heading northward, an issue that has been on the rise in recent times.
Panama is set to transfer 70 individuals to India on September 3, while there's no confirmed number regarding the return of Chinese migrants, Mulino mentioned without going into details.
Upcoming flights carrying numerous Ecuadorians and Colombians are also scheduled, Mulino shared, emphasizing that Ecuadorians make up the second-largest group of migrants in the area, trailing only Venezuelans.
Twenty-nine Colombians already traveled back on a previous flight under the same initiative.
A growing number of migrants aspiring to reach the US have been crossing into Panama from the Darién Gap, a perilous rainforest region connecting South and Central America. The current US administration has been striving to turn back migrants from the southwestern US border by establishing immigration processing stations in Latin America and incentivizing neighboring countries to augment border control measures.
So far in 2024, more than 230,000 individuals have entered Panama through the Darién.
This represents a 30% surge in crossings from the same span of time in 2023, as per Panama's migration agency head, Roger Mojica, who made this statement on Tuesday.
The US immigration processing stations in Latin America aim to manage migration from the Americas, aiming to control the increasing number of individuals attempting to enter the world via the southwestern US border.
The current surge in migration from the Americas, predominantly from Venezuela and Ecuador, is leading to a significant impact on countries like Panama, which has seen a 30% increase in crossings compared to the previous year.
