Panama has begun to carry out the deportation of migrants who have passed through the Darién Gap with funding from the United States. The first U.S. funded flight left the country on August 20 with twenty-nine Colombians on board, according to the Associated Press.
This is the second deportation flight carried out by the new administration in Panama this month. Previously on August 7, Panama carried out its first deportation flight of migrants who had crossed the border in an irregular manner and were transiting the country in hopes of reaching the United States.
The first flight carried twenty-eight Colombians and five guards, according to a press statement issued by Panama’s immigration authority. These deportations are supported by the United States, which has sought to coordinate with the Panamanian government in stemming migration through the dangerous Darién Gap.
Other deportation flights are planned for the near future, following a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino.
According to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed on July 1 between U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Panama’s Minister of Foreign Relations Javier Martínez-Acha Vásquez, the United States has agreed to assist in financing these deportations as part of the latest measure to stem the migrant trails that lead north. The document also states that these deportations will only affect adults and are set to be carried out within ninety-six hours of entering Panama. Yet, Mulino has stated that the deportation flights will be voluntary.
How the agreement will ultimately work is unclear, and the number of migrants to be deported is in question given the effort’s limited budget. According to the MOU, the United States will provide $6 million for the flights.
“The United States obviously is supposed to provide some financial aid for these deportations, and on Panama’s side they have to uphold international law with respect to fear screenings,” explains Tom Cartwright, who tracks deportation flights with the migrant rights group Witness At The Border, about the basics of applying for asylum. “The assistance, at least initially, will be six million dollars. It is nothing compared to the flow through the Darién Gap, which has been running basically 30,000 [people] a month.”
There are also questions over how far reaching deportations will be, given the diversity of migrants from many different nations passing through Panama. Deportations require engagement and agreement between nations to receive migrants, but diplomatic relations between Venezuela—the origin point of most migrants taking the Darién Gap route—and Panama have been severed.
But one thing is clear, this agreement once again shifts the United States’s southern border further south.
Panama’s newly elected Mulino made cutting off the routes through the Darién Gap one of the primary policy promises of his campaign. He reiterated this during his July 1 inauguration.
“I won’t allow Panama to be an open path for thousands of people who enter our country illegally, supported by an international organization related to drug trafficking and human trafficking,” Mulino declared on July 1 following his inauguration. “I understand that there are deep-rooted reasons for migration, but each country has to resolve its problems.”
The Darién Gap became a popular route for migrants from South America and other regions, including China, India, and several African nations, due to the implementation of new visa regimes that made the migratory route to the United States far longer. In 2023, a record 520,000 migrants were estimated to have traversed the treacherous jungles of the Darién Gap, which separates Panama and Colombia.
In 2024, the number of people estimated to cross the Darién Gap continues to hover at about 67,000 people each month. But the route has proven dangerous, with migrants facing death as they cross through the region. In July 2024, ten migrants drowned in a river near Panama’s border with Colombia.
Yet the possibility of deportation back is meant to be a form of deterrence to dissuade migrants from taking the dangerous route. It is uncertain if this threat will lead to lower numbers, especially given the already elevated risk of choosing to take the route through the jungle.
“Unless they can add significantly to that funding, I just don't see that this has got a lot of deterrent effect for people who are desperate,” Cartwright says. “And if they’re desperate enough to go through the Darién [Gap], I’m not sure that they are going to worry about the few people who are going to be deported back to their country.”
Panama’s August 7 deportation flight joins a growing practice in the region. A similar U.S. deal to facilitate deportation flights is currently pending with Costa Rica.
In recent years, Mexico has increasingly carried out deportation flights. The majority take passengers to Central America, with multiple flights each Thursday to Guatemala and Honduras using Mexican National Police airplanes, according to Cartwright.
As of July 31, there have been thirty-two deportation flights from Mexico to Guatemala carrying 3,297 Guatemalans, according to data from the Guatemalan Government’s Immigration Institute. Mexico, too, has expelled migrants by land routes. According to data from the Guatemalan Immigration Institute, 8,062 Guatemalans were deported by land on 263 buses as of July 31.
In December 2023, the Mexican government briefly renewed deportation flights to Venezuela under pressure from the Biden Administration. While the deportation flights were suspended months later in February, as of June 2024, Mexico was working to renew deportation flights back to Venezuela.
Mexico’s crackdown on irregular migration has contributed to decreases in the number of encounters along the country’s northern border with the United States. But Mexico has slowed the flow of migrants north, and their number of deportations remains relatively low in comparison to the United States.
Cartwright attributes this to changes following the tragic March 2023 fire in a migrant detention facility in Ciudad Juárez that killed forty migrants. Prior to the tragedy, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled migrants cannot be detained for more than thirty-six hours. But deportations take much longer to process.
The United States has continued to deport migrants via chartered flights at a steady rate. The vast majority of the deportation flights have gone to Guatemala, with 41,002 people being deported on 341 flights chartered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency between January 1 and July 31 of this year. But in spite of the discourse around an increase in deportation flights, the number of flights in 2024 has been the same as in previous years.
“There’s been no major increase despite the rhetoric of getting tougher on the border. But on returning people they are at least being very consistent,” Cartwright says.