The following excerpts are from a recorded English-language discussion between Director General Gobea and CIS analyst Todd Bensman on August 13, 2024, at SENAFRONT headquarters in Panama City. The interview focused on newly seated Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino’s vow to “close” the Darien Gap migrant trail immediately, in a plan reliant on American funding for large-scale repatriation flights. The plan also is heavily dependent on other enforcement measures requiring a diplomatic push for neighboring transit countries to similarly crack down. At this point in time, SENAFRONT had closed trails, renewed action against human smugglers associated with Colombia’s Clan del Golfo, on land and at sea, and is considering entry rules designed to deter migrants from leaving home.
On initial Panamanian efforts to follow through on President Jose Raul Mulino’s vow to “close” the Darien Gap migrant passage
Todd Bensman (B): Please describe what SENAFRONT is doing to achieve the president’s agenda to close the Darien Gap…
Director General Jorge Gobea (G): It’s very important to change the dynamic of immigration through the Darien Gap. We need to stop it by a diplomatic way, and all the countries of the Americas have a responsibility to this. Because we understand there are many trails in the Darien that are used in the last 16 years, we have studied the phenomenon and what we want to do is try to do is reduce all paths to one path to concentrate the effort. To understand where the migrants are walking, we can provide more security assistance and do extractions from the jungle.
The other line of effort is direct against the Gulf Cartel because we understand they have links with our Indians. They have links with different groups in Panama and they want to continue smuggling humans through Panama.
We have different lines of effort of attack on this issue. We have communications efforts to provide all of the region to understand the dangers to the immigrants who came through Panama. We have an information campaign called ‘Darien is Not a World; It’s a jungle.
So that’s how we are dealing with this issue, this big phenomenon that effects Panama.
B: Why this and why now?
G: The migration has multidimensional impacts … on the social net of our Indians and how long it is going to take to repair all this damage. [Read Bensman’s: Biden-Harris open border is destroying an indigenous tribe’s land and way of life in The New York Post.]
We have Indians now who don’t know how to plant crops. They don’t know how to fish because they are focusing on commerce and transport. That changed the dynamic. When you went to towns like Bajo Chiquito 10 years ago, everything was raw materials. Right now everything is based on currency, based on comfort, is totally different than what we knew 10 years ago.
B: Is it true that Panama will continue to let Venezuelans in and not deport them and has closed three of four paths, pushing them through one path for normal processing and that there’s been very little deportation? In Colombia, the numbers coming a way down. What are the Panamanians doing?
G: We don’t make deportations; we just make expulsions. Deportation is a legal aspect of everything. Pushbacks, yes.
In this moment, when I arrived July 4, we had 800 a day. Today that’s down 45,000 from the same period of 2023. From June to July alone, less than half as many crossed in July as in June. And the first half of August is down another 50 percent from July. That’s what you saw. The numbers are way down.
B: What do you think is going on?
G: We expected reductions in the four months prior to elections (Venezuelan ones) because a lot of people were waiting to vote and stay there to see what happened. But after the elections we expect to have increasing immigration. But the situation is still fragile in Venezuela right now. We expect an increase in the flow right now. We are prepared for that. But I guess if in this moment the numbers show a difference it’s because something is happening there that we don’t understand. We expect an increase in migration in the next month.
B: What is SENAFRONT doing. What are all the things you are doing so far?
G: When you want to attack a phenomenon like this you need to attack the source of the evil. That’s the Gulf Cartel because that’s a criminal activity for them. We have identified the structures. We identified their maritime capability and we attacked the maritime capability, the capacity to move migrants through the corridor of the Atlantic and Pacific, and we right now are making all these activities on the trails so we can …. We are going to make one or two different barbed wire [fences] in that area and maybe close totally okay and we say, ‘No, no more migrants on this road.’ If you can, you need to enter by a normal migration post to move through Panama step by step.
We closed three with 4.7 kilometers of barbed wire. We used the terrain, so when you find that barbed wires, you can’t cross there. You need to move to another place.
B: what is happening on the one route that remains open where you want to funnel them through. When they cross on the open route, how does SENAFRONT handle them
G: They need to continue walking. We have patrols working in the area because of our responsibility to try to avoid organized crime, trying to rob and rape the migrants, so they can walk freely by this road. Our effort is to try to make this road safer, as safe as possible. We are not migration. We are security. We don’t stamp anything.
B: Is the “controlled flow” policy still in use then?
G: We are still using the same controlled flow down trail, the same control. We check biometrics, identification…everything. Some things we do in the jungle are totally different than what we do in the camps. First camps, then second camps where you take the bus to Costa Rica. One is more focused on security and one is to identify your profile.
B: What’s the thinking behind putting up the barbed wire?
G: You have four different entrances to the country. Four focuses of contamination. We need to focus on the influences on the [tribal] communities. We need to push out the migrants from the communities. Because they make these communities think they can exploit the opportunity… they exploit prostitution, drug sales, all the things that are happening in these what we say are regular camps but also the unauthorized camps in the jungle, so that’s why we are trying to push them out of the communities so all these communities can be safe from the flow of the migrants. So we push them out and we concentrate our forces and we start to patrol this area so if somebody wants to go up close to the community, we push them north.
B: You mentioned expulsions. What is Panama doing now?
G: Yes…If you are from Colombia and you have records, you have links with those groups, we have pushbacks…to Colombia. We push back to Medellin. We make a flight a day in a week. From Panama City. It’s in open sources.
B: What about by boat? What do you do when you catch a boat?
G: We prosecute the Colombian or Panamanian whose dealing with the migrants because, for us, it’s human trafficking, so they’re going to pay in jail at least nine years. It’s not new. We have all of our life done it. And they understand. That’s why they don’t want to smuggle the persons by boat. We take possession of the boat, everything, so that affects the structure and capacity of moving them to the city. They know. They prefer to cross the border in the shores and run. They understand they’re going to pay in jail here.
B: Is it true what the immigrants told me in Colombia, that if you don’t have papers, the Panamanians won’t let you in?
G: It’s part of what we want…If you want to cross in Panama, you need to bring papers. If you don’t have papers we can’t scan or screen you or look at who you are. It’s one of the conditions.
We have a diplomatic effort. That diplomatic effort is, migrants in your country…and if they want to cross through Panama, they need to bring an official document. We try to check biometrics and the databases that we have. In the end, if we don’t know who you are, we are not going to let you continue. We make our effort, but we can’t keep you.
B: So you can still get through whether you have papers or not?
G: It’s more difficult. It’s going to be harder in the future because we’re going to reinforce that you need to come with papers.
B: How will you reinforce that?
G: With the Colombians. That’s the diplomatic solution. Not right now. In the future. It’s difficult to do, though, when you have 5,000 or 10,000 migrants. You have to move them out. You need to keep them moving.
B: I was wondering why Panama, officially, always let them through so why close it now? So I guess that’s the political reason.
G: Yes, because remember that the migrants they’re not … it’s not a felony. It’s a human right. We cannot stop them… it’s not allowed. We need to provide an alternative for the migrants. If you need to cross, you need to cross by this area and by this condition because it’s safer for you. You want to migrate? It’s okay, but you need to do this. This is the way you can move through Panama.
B: In the future will there be more expulsions to Medellin?
G: Sure. That’s the plan. The plan is not only Colombian but Ecuadorians and Venezuelans. That’s the plan. But this is still a diplomatic effort. That’s the task. We’re doing what we know how to do. We’re working on that.
B: What would qualify somebody for expulsion?
G: Records. Criminals. Maybe in the future, without documents. Maybe in the future when we have the capacity to send volume.
B: What about by marine. Can you expel them by water? If you can land in Medellin, maybe you can land them in, you know, Necocli or some other…
G: Remember that the condition is set by the country that will receive. They say Medellin because they have the platform to receive.
B: The other day I saw a news story that said Panama sent one plane with 38 people. What were they talking about?
G: We send planes one time a week. We’ve been making that since last year, since November, we’ve been sending flights every week with migrants.
On reports of terrorist discoveries in Panama
B: Another article recently that they caught some terrorists here in Panama. What can you tell me about that?
G: It’s not fake. We did take and we profile a few members of terrorist cell from the Middle East, from Afghanistan, from Syria, from Africa, from Somalia. We linked and we profiled them to be members of an active cell or group. We profile here. We start to make all the screenings. In some cases, we profile here and start to make all the screening and, on some occasions, the database [checks] took time. And when these migrants are moving through Costa Rica, they show the flag and say, ‘hey you were checking in Panama but the information was five days after you crossed Panama, but we understand you were an active terrorist,’ and they take them from the migrant flow.
B: What’s the story of those guys, the most recent ones.
G: We have many stories of that. We don’t have just one. We have many stories of that. We have many stories of that from Somalia, from Yemen.
B: The most recent one, though…
G: They were members of a Salafist group, and they had links with different activities, and we support the agencies, like the FBI and other agencies that are charged with making a big investigation on those persons.
B: Where are they now, the most recent ones?
G: On some occasions, they are returned to their official port of entry. Maybe it’s in Africa. Maybe it’s Bosnia. We return them to their previous position.
B: After the Americans are finished with them?
G: It takes time. It takes time because there’s a process of interviews.
B: Were they up to anything, these most recent ones?
G: There are classified interviews and everything from all these [is classified].
But in this moment, we don’t have the capability to screen everybody. That’s why we profile. Maybe in this moment, with the reduction of the flow, we can check like 3 percent and in the worst moment, one percent.
On a July 1 signed U.S. agreement to pay for expensive expulsion flights
B: What about the U.S. agreement to help with air deportations? The Americans haven’t given the money, and President Mulino is publicly complaining. Where are we on that?
G: We’re waiting. We’re waiting. It’s political. You know you can promise something, but we don’t have the funds in this moment… but we need to press. We need to press because we can do our part of the agreement but we need the resources to move the big number we need to. It’s not a joint operation. The support that we require is for flights. Yes, if you [Americans] don’t have airplanes, you can pay for flights.
B: How do you want to increase deportation flights or what do you want to do?
G: We want to increase that capability to more Colombians, more Venezuelans and more from Ecuador. But all of that depends on the diplomatic line of effort we need to bring forth, and we need to make clear that all these countries want to receive its nationals, principally from Venezuela and Ecuador. There is a diplomatic line of effort. I am focused on the security line of effort.
B: It’s very expensive to fly African immigrants back to Africa. What’s that plan?
G: The main task is to fly to Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia. That’s a biggest number of migrants. We are not focused right now to move to Africa because those numbers are very low. We are focused on the main, critical task: Venezuela.
B: But the Venezuelans right now are not diplomatically interested in this proposal, right?
G: Right now, no, they’re not interested. But Colombia is interested in stopping the flow because they are affected by the flow. They want to support it because it’s beneficial to control the flow of migration. We are working together, the two countries, because they understand we need to work together on this. For both countries, this phenomenon has overcome our capacities and capabilities, but we are working together in a better way.
B: How much American help would Panama need, ideally? How many flights? Or whose aircraft? What do you want from the Americans?
G: There are different tasks, different levels. This is not only a police solution. We need a political solution. Maybe changing the migration politics in the United States can change all the dynamic.
If you ask me if I need flights, yes, I need flights. But flights are not going to solve the problem. We need to provide stability to Venezuela because Venezuela is a main source of immigration. Venezuela needs to be a country for Venezuelans so that Venezuelans don’t feel the need to jump out of the country and make all this drama all the way to the `United States. So there are a lot of tasks we need to do, stability… deportations.
We need to work in a holistic way. We need to reinforce the politics of all the countries that provide open skies. We need to change the migration policy in the United States. We need to reinforce the deportations. And we need to, I guess, join all the countries of South America to understand that migration is going to affect all the countries. Today it’s Venezuela. Maybe tomorrow it’s Peru. Maybe tomorrow is Chile or Brazil.
We need a solution. If you want deportation, deport them. We don’t care about the money or is there airplanes, we need to send a message to the migrants, that Darien is not a solution. It’s not a feasible way to migrate. It’s not a safe way.
B: So right now the plan is to increase expulsions and include maybe people who don’t have papers. But beyond that, what else? Anything about new routes developing to get around you?
G: There’s an effort to create alternatives. I can’t say that we have a clear solution but we are looking for a requirement for official ID, a passport, that if you don’t have any record and you can’t migrate. We need to provide that tool but we don’t have that tool right now.
On whether Panama can really “close” the Darien Gap
B: What is the definition of “close the gap”?
G: I guess when the president says that we’re going to close the gap, we’re going to make the Darien Gap … like a disincentive the use of Darien as a path for migration. That’s what we’re looking for when he says he wants to close it. When we started to close, that created in effect in the mindset of the migrants and maybe we’re going to enforce other events. We are not closing it physically, but we are closing it in the mindset of the migrants.
B: Can the Panamanian government close the gap without American help? How do you define closed? What does a closed Darien Gap look like?
G: Right now, our main task is send a message that Darien is not safe for migrants. We want to dis-incentivize the [unintelligible] in the mindset of migrants. That’s the way we are closing the Darien Gap, with the physical presence to channelize the flow to one path where we can (centralize?) our effort, where we can be clear that we can make it as safe as possible for the migrants without the inherent dangers of the Darien Gap. But more important is that the migrants understand that it’s not a good decision to walk to Panama. That’s the way the president wants to make it. We are reinforcing with the effort to necessary to close the mindset of the migrants so they use an alternative.
B: Can the Panamanian government close the gap without US help?
G: Unilaterally, we don’t have the capability without the U.S. government support of our efforts because it’s a common threat. Because, for Panamanians, migration is a security issue. That’s why we face it that way, and we face it with …our preferable partners, the United States, in security and defense. We understand that we need logistics support to reinforce the politics of expulsion of migrants that have links with criminal organizations so we can expel to different countries and avoid their movement in the normal flow to the United States.
Also, I guess it’s very important that we understand that the politics is a big deal – it’s the golden nugget of all the migration – and we need to reinforce a change the migration politics of the border in the United States so that we can send a very clear message to the migrants and they can change their mindset.
Regarding the large United Nations and nongovernmental migrant advocacy groups working in Panama which favor the migration
B: What have you heard from the United Nations people and the NGOs that are there about the plan to regulate the gap and tighten it up?
G: Panama is a sovereign country. We take our decisions based on the perspective of human rights and focus on the needs of what’s best for the country. We understand what Panama needs to what needs to be done for Panamanians. That’s why the president takes this decision, and if he says we need to close, we need to close.
B: Are they complaining over in the City of Knowledge? How’s the City of Knowledge taking this?
G: They can have this mindset, but we have a responsibility to the country.
B: Are they registering concern?
G: Not now, because all of our decisions are based on human rights, respecting human rights.
B: Thank you for all of your time, sir.