Nobody has said who they were. Panama’s National Border Service reported on Wednesday that ten migrants drowned while trying to cross a fast-moving river in the Darien Gap, the jungle strip along the border with Colombia. Their bodies were later seen close to the Indigenous community of Carreto, and the border service said the strong current had swept them away.
An agency official who was not cleared to speak publicly told reporters, on condition of anonymity, that the deaths are thought to have happened on July 16. The place is so remote that word took until now to reach the public. The prosecutor’s office is looking into the details, including where the victims came from, the official said. More than half of the migrants who cross the Darien are Venezuelan.
Rainy season, record traffic
Think of the Darien rivers as a gate that gets harder to open every summer. Panama is in its rainy season, and that makes the many rivers migrants must wade or swim far more dangerous.
The traffic is heavy. In 2023, a record year, more than 500,000 migrants made the crossing. So far this year, more than 212,000 have entered Panama through the Darien. Before these ten deaths were announced, Panama’s border police had counted at least 29 migrants dead on the route this year, and 84 deaths in all of last year.
Drownings happen from time to time, mostly in the rainy months. Authorities said this was one of the largest tolls they can remember. In February, five Afghan migrants drowned and one more disappeared off the coast as they tried to reach Panama by boat from Colombia.
Barbed wire on the trails
The latest deaths came just days after Panama blocked some popular routes with barbed wire, with the aim of steering migrants to one central receiving point. NBC News noted that enforcement at some locations, including parts of the U.S. southwest border, often pushes people toward riskier and more remote paths.
President José Raúl Mulino, who is new in office, has promised to stop migration through the Darien with help from the U.S. government. In its statement, the border service said “transnational organized crime through local collaborators in Caribbean coastal communities insist on using unauthorized paths putting the lives of these people at serious risk.”
