‘A Ticket to Disney’? Politicians Charge Millions to Send Migrants to U.S.

Every step through the jungle, there is money to be made.

The boat ride to reach the rainforest: $40. A guide on the treacherous route once you start walking: $170. A porter to carry your backpack over the muddy mountains: $100. A plate of chicken and rice after arduous climbing: $10. Special, all-inclusive packages to make the perilous slog faster and more bearable, with tents, boots and other necessities: $500, or more.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are now pouring through a sliver of jungle known as the Darién Gap, the only land route to the United States from South America, in a record tide that the Biden administration and the Colombian government have vowed to stop.

But the windfall here at the edge of the continent is simply too big to pass up, and the entrepreneurs behind the migrant gold rush are not underground smugglers hiding from the authorities.

They are politicians, prominent businessmen and elected leaders, now sending thousands of migrants toward the United States in plain sight each day — and charging millions of dollars a month for the privilege.

“We have organized everything: the boatmen, the guides, the bag carriers,” said Darwin García, an elected community board member and former town council member in Acandí, a Colombian municipality at the entrance to the jungle.

The crush of migrants willing to risk everything to make it to the United States is “the best thing that could have happened” to a poor town like his, he said.

Now, García’s younger brother, Luis Fernando Martínez, the head of a local tourism association, is a leading candidate for mayor of Acandí — defending the migration business as the only profitable industry in a place that “didn’t have a defined economy before.”

The Darién Gap has quickly morphed into one of the Western Hemisphere’s most pressing political and humanitarian crises. A trickle only a few years ago has become a flood: More than 360,000 people have already crossed the jungle in 2023, according to the Panamanian government.

In response, the United States, Colombia and Panama signed an agreement in April to “end the illicit movement of people” through the Darién Gap, a practice that “leads to death and exploitation of vulnerable people for significant profit.”

Today, that profit is greater than ever, with local leaders collecting tens of millions of dollars this year alone from migrants in an enormous people-moving operation.

“This is a beautiful economy,” said Fredy Marín, a former town council member in the neighboring municipality of Necoclí who manages a boat company that ferries migrants on their way to the United States, charging them $40 a head. Marín is now running for mayor of Necoclí, vowing to preserve the thriving migration industry.

U.S. diplomats have visited the towns next to the Darién Gap in recent months, strolling dusty streets and shaking hands with Marín, García and others running the migration business. White House officials say they believe that the Colombian government is following through on its commitment to crack down on illicit migration.

But on the ground, the opposite is happening. The New York Times has spent months here in the Darién Gap and surrounding towns, and the national government has, at best, a marginal presence.

Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, acknowledged that the national government had little control over the region, but added that it was not his goal to stop migration through the Darién. After all, he argued, the roots of this migration were “the product of poorly taken measures against Latin American peoples,” particularly by the United States, pointing to Washington’s sanctions against Venezuela.

In the absence of the Colombian government, local leaders have decided to handle migration themselves.

Today, the business is run by elected community board members like García, through a registered nonprofit started by the board’s president and his family. It’s called the New Light Darién Foundation, and it manages the entire route from Acandí to the border with Panama — setting prices for the journey, collecting fees and running sprawling campsites in the jungle.

The foundation has hired more than 2,000 local guides and backpack carriers. Migrants pay for tiers of what the foundation calls “services,” including the basic $170 guide and security package to the border. Then a migration “adviser” wraps two bracelets around their wrists as proof of payment.

“Like a ticket to Disney,” said Renny Montilla, 25, a construction worker from Venezuela.

García says that the foundation’s work is legal, in part because it guides people to an international border, but not over one.

Some officials have questioned whether the foundation is running a smuggling operation under the guise of a nonprofit. A human rights officer responsible for monitoring the Necoclí government blamed the crisis on the negligence of national leaders, and noted that officials weren’t motivated to stop it because they were making money from it.

Even García’s brother, the mayoral candidate, said he wished the national government would clarify the legal “thin line” that local residents working in the migration industry were walking.

“Five hundred thousand people are going to pass through” our town, Martínez said. “What do we do?”

Hanging over the entire business is a large and powerful drug-trafficking group called the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces, sometimes known as the Gulf Clan. Its control over this part of northern Colombia is so complete that the country’s ombudsman’s office calls the group the region’s “hegemonic” armed actor.

In a statement, the armed group contended that it “in no way” profits from “the business that traffics in migrants’ dreams<em>.</em>”

Petro, the Colombian president, dismissed that notion, saying the Gulf Clan was earning $30 million a year from the migration business.

At the edge of the forest, the transactions are plain to see. Before they enter the jungle, migrants have to pay the group a separate tax of about $80 a person for permission to cross the Darién, according to multiple people who collect the fee in Necoclí.

Once migrants have paid, they even get a receipt, the tax collectors say: a tiny sticker, often an American flag, on their passports.

<b> Taming a Jungle </b>

Thick, hot and prone to intense rain, sliced by raging rivers and steep mountains, the Darién jungle acted as a vast natural barrier between North and South America for generations.

Guerrillas and other armed groups have long used the dense forest for cover and drug smuggling. The terrain and threat of violence once kept all but the most desperate away.

But a stew of crises and politics has brought a huge rise in the number of people trekking from South America to the United States in the past few years.

Now, the New Light Darién Foundation is helping to turn that natural barrier into something much more passable, with restaurants, camps, porters and guides. This new economy, run in large part by elected leaders, has acted as an accelerant, emboldening more people to take — and pay for — the journey than ever.

In August alone, almost 82,000 people made the trek through the Darién, according to Panamanian officials, by far the largest single-month total on record. So many people are coming through the jungle that Panama and Costa Rica say they cannot handle the surge. Panama’s top migration official, Samira Gozaine, has even threatened to close its border with Colombia.

By professionalizing the migration business, Colombian leaders say they can prevent their impoverished towns from being overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of needy people, help the migrants traverse the treacherous jungle more safely, and feed their own economies in the process.

Migrant deaths in the Colombian portion of the Darién now appear to be relatively low, aid workers say, because even the Gaitanist armed group, or Gulf Clan, has realized that the Darién’s notoriety is bad for business.

The foundation’s guides take migrants only part of the way, leaving them at the border with Panama, often with no food or money left — and days of hiking to go in a part of the jungle that is even more dangerous than what they already endured. The United Nations counted more than 140 migrant deaths in the Panama portion of the Darién last year alone, nearly triple the year before. At least 10% of them were children.

Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, came to office last year promising to help long forgotten parts of the country — like the communities now in charge of the jungle crossings. In the interview, Petro said he had never heard of the New Light Darién Foundation. But just like the people running the migration business, he presented his hands-off approach to migration as a humanitarian one.

“I would say yes, I’ll help, but not like you think,” Petro said of the agreement with the Biden administration. He said any solution to the issue had to focus on “solving migrants’ social problems, which do not come from Colombia.”

He expects half a million people to cross the Darién this year, he said, and then 1 million next year.

<b> ‘Travel Safe!’ </b>

The boats leave each day from the eastern edge of Necoclí, the docks filled with people from as far as India, China and Afghanistan.

“Travel safe!” Marín’s employees boom from a microphone. “Travel happy!”

At his office, Marín said that he was proud to be a part of the industry that had become the region’s most important employer.

At almost any hour, day or night, private buses wheeze into town, carrying migrants who have learned about the Darién route on Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok.

The streets of Necoclí are now filled with people speaking Mandarin, Persian and Nepali. Locals with wooden carts make a living selling flimsy tents, snake repellent and toddler-size rubber boots. Aid workers patrol the streets, offering a bit of help — water jugs, diapers, sunscreen.

The poorest migrants arrive by foot. Most come from Venezuela, which has been in the grips of an economic and humanitarian crisis for nearly a decade.

Once across the choppy Gulf of Urabá, the passengers on Marín’s boats arrive in the town of Acandí, at the mouth of the jungle. For decades, some residents here have led migrants into the jungle for a fee, arguing that people would die without help.

On a recent afternoon, Alexandra Vilcacundo, 44, traveling with 30 others fleeing rising violence in Ecuador, stepped onto the wooden dock in Acandí. Vilcacundo, a seamstress, looked terrified, having left three children behind.

Once loaded into motorized rickshaws, Vilcacundo and the other migrants were ferried through Acandí before finally passing through a gate into a compound García called “the shelter.”

Roughly 1,000 migrants had gathered inside the compound. Local men roved the expanse, introducing themselves as the foundation’s “advisers,” in charge of collecting fees and describing the route from here.

García of the community board showed off public works nearby, built by the board with funds from the migration business.

He said the town had spent decades trying to become a tourist destination. But for now, without decent schools, a hospital or even a road connecting it to the rest of the country, all it had was migration.

“What we have done” with migration is more than tourism brought “in 50 years,” García said.

<b> Gatorade and Ice Cream</b>

Few places embody the transformation of the Darién route like the first camp in the jungle.

Two years ago, the route from the shelter in Acandí to this camp, Las Tecas, was a crude dirt path. Today, it is a road navigable by truck. The camp itself was once a muddy expanse. Today it is a village, with a welcome pavilion, security checkpoint, shops and restaurants, and even a billiard hall.

Here, the New Light Darién Foundation has organized the vast teams of guides and backpack carriers. The foundation coordinates their schedules to spread around the work and pays them $125 per trek. Porters are contracted individually by migrants who want help carrying their luggage or children, somewhere between $60 and $120 per load.

At the Las Tecas welcome pavilion that evening, guides wanded the migrants with metal detectors, a new protocol. The next morning, more than 2,000 migrants assembled in the heart of the camp.

Soon, a man from the foundation, Iván Díaz, climbed a hill above the camp, beginning the morning’s orientation. This was not a race, he instructed on a megaphone. This was about surviving to make it to the United States.

Don’t sleep by the rivers, he said; they often rise with the rain. Eat food with salt to prevent dehydration. Take breaks. Children should stay with their parents.

It was roughly a day and a half hike to the border with Panama, and along the way, the foundation had positioned small camps where migrants could buy water and food.

Prices rose as people climbed. A Gatorade cost $2.50 at the start, and $5 at the end. Ice cream sellers hiked with the crowd, coolers on their backs.

The migrants moved slowly, crisscrossing a river, climbing hills knotted by roots. With so many people, the traffic jam at times slowed to gridlock.

Most of the group slept that night in a crowded, muddy expanse where a generator buzzed and several restaurants offered fried fish or chicken for $10 a plate.

Many families, having spent all their money to get this far, ate nothing, wondering what they would do for the rest of the trek. At dusk, the camp smelled of human feces and gasoline. The mood began to shift.

<b> The Handoff </b>

For thousands of migrants, the normalization of this route has set up a cruel paradox.

On the Colombian side of the Darién, where the government is almost absent and the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces, or Gulf Clan, dominate, crime in the jungle is lower, at least according to aid groups and researchers interviewing migrants at the end of the route.

That perception of safety is sending more and more people into the forest, believing that they will make it out alive.

But at the border with Panama, the foundation’s guides leave them — crossing could lead to arrest — and the power of the armed group recedes. Then, on the Panamanian side, small criminal bands rove the forest, using rape as a tool to extract money and punish those who cannot pay.

On their last morning in Colombia, the group of more than 2,000 migrants rose before dawn.

It took roughly two hours to climb two hills known as the Twins, and then they reached a muddy clearing with a hand-painted sign marking the border.

In the clearing, migrants still lucky enough to have money paid their porters. And then a man stepped forward to offer final instructions.

Move slowly, stick together and follow a route marked by blue and green pieces of plastic, he told the group. It would take three more days to reach the end of the jungle, he explained, where the United Nations and the government of Panama offered support.

“From the municipality of Acandí,” he said before the migrants pushed on, “we would like to wish you a happy trip.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/world/americas/migrant-business-darien-gap.html" rel="nofollow">The New York Times</a>.