New Research from FAIR Details how Biden’s Open-Borders Policies Turned the Pristine Jungle of the Darién Gap into a Migrant Superhighway
November 27, 2024
a jungle near the Panama-Colombia border
Michael Capuano
Researcher/Staff Writer
FAIR’s latest issue brief details the humanitarian and national security consequences of President Biden’s open-borders policies in the Darién Gap, the stretch of treacherous jungle that connects Panama with South America.
Biden’s open-borders policies launched a flood of migrants traveling across the Darien Gap. Before 2021, only a few thousand illegal migrants made the journey each year. Most understood that the dangerous trek was not worth the likelihood of being turned back at the U.S. southern border. However, when the Biden administration threw open the borders in 2021, releasing most migrants that arrived at the southern border, well over a million illegal migrants passed through the jungle that year alone. An unprecedented 520,000 crossed the Darien Gap in 2023 alone.
The migrant wave caused by the Biden administration has had devastating humanitarian consequences. Thousands of unaccompanied children have been recorded traveling through the jungle with only human smugglers to guide them. Armed gangs of robbers strip-search women and girls at gunpoint, while sexual violence rates are equivalent to war zones. All of this is taking place in an incredibly valuable forest reserve where criminal gangs now make conservation impossible. Illegal migration has also destroyed the traditional lifestyle of the indigenous people of the Gap, who now rely on providing services to people on their way to our border.
https://www.fairus.org/news/misc/new-research-fair-details-how-bidens-open-borders-policies-turned-pristine-jungle-darien
