Caravan of migrants wants to return to Venezuela for fear of Trump

Panamanian police prevented the passage to a caravan of dozens of migrants on Tuesday, the majority of Venezuelans, who crossed from Costa Rica to Panama after giving up following the United States due to the difficulties of the journey and deportation policies of Donald Trump.

Five kilometers from the Paso Canoas border, a group of riots forced the caravan to go back to Costa Rican territory to undergo an orderly repatriation process, said AFP collaborators in the place.

By Albertonews

Border police officers argued with the group, but the incident did not go to anymore. Migrants got on buses to be taken to a shelter on the border.

«We went to look for a dream and a mission that could not be fulfilled and now we go back home again,» a migrant told AFP that did not identify, on a Paso Canoas road, about 365 km southwest of city of Panama.

Other migrants pointed to local press media that they also returned frustrated by «the situation in the United States», which hardened their policies against irregular migration under Trump’s second presidential mandate.

«What we want is to go to our country,» Venezuelan Andrés Paredes told AFP, who returns for «fear» to suffer hunger and sleep in the streets during the way to finally not be able to enter the United States.

Shortly before they were forced to back down, the Ministers of Security of Costa Rica, Mario Zamora, and Panama, Frank Abrego, had agreed that migrants would be sent to a shelter in Costa Rican territory.

In the shelter they will be subjected to biometric controls to rule out criminal records and will then be sent by bus to Panama for repatriation «by air or maritime,» according to a statement from the Ministry of Security of Panama.

«We want to guarantee an orderly, legal, humanitarian and safe migratory flow,» said Zamora, according to the official note.

The migrants, who return from Mexico and Central America countries, and among which there were several children, had remained for about four days in the border crossing with the hope of entering Panama and continuing towards their countries in South America.

But the Panamanian police prevented them from crossing without documents, which motivated the discomfort of migrants and forced the authorities of the two countries to intervene and agree on the repatriation mechanism.

Many of those migrants had crossed weeks or months before the dangerous Panamanian jungle of the Darién, border with Colombia. So far this year, it has crossed some 2,500 people, 95% less than in the same period of the previous year.