The Darién Gap: Where Dreams Die

experience joy. I'd only been in the tiny Emberra village of a couple of days, and I had already seen the lifeless body of a girl as the migrants carried her into town. The river I was sleeping around him with this group of migrants resting here in the shade had swept sleeping children to their deaths earlier this year, and up to stream of me there were at least three people's remains here. It was shin deep, but crossing upstream where it's above head height and raides down out

of the mountains in steep ravines. Was the migrants I walked back to town with told me the stuff of nightmares. The voice you just heard was a migrant from Cameroon who called himself James. That's not his real name, and astute listeners would have noticed that it is my real name, but for the protection of James and his family, it's a name we'll be using when I met James. We're in a migrant reception center called Las Blancas, to the

north of the Daien Gap. To get there, one has to take a dugout canoe called a piragua from Bajo Jiquito. The voyage takes five hours, and for that five hours, migrants are packed fifteen to a boat wearing bright orange life jackets. Here the boat with Embra Praguero, who sits at the back driving the boat with a tooth stroke motor, and a guide who sits on the front, using a pole when necessary to push the boat through shallow sections.

The Umbraa people are indigenous to the area that's commonly known as a Darian Gap, or at least to this part of it, and a tiny Embrea village of Bajo Juquito. It's a first settlement migrants encounter is they emerge from the perilous crossing of the jungle that divides Central America from South America and thousands of people from a better future. There's a morale patch that the Panamanian Border Patrol and military wear on their uniforms. The reflects a slogan in

a government messaging campaign, da Jungla. It says. The campaign was launched in August, and it translates to the Darien isn't a route or maybe a road to a better translation, it's a jungle. Obviously it's actually both. But this is like no route. Most of us will be familiar with. The dark and foreboding jungle I saw in Bahajiguito is one of the most impenetrable on Earth, and the crossing of it is among the most dangerous land migration routes.

In the nineteen seventies, the British Army said it most experienced explorers to find a way through the gap. Their commander called the gap a gold for saken place. Today, migrants have their own names for it, Route del Morte or sometimes the Green Hell. Here's a group from Cameroon explaining why they didn't see a future there and they decided to take this dangerous route.

and what's killing the citizens of our country. There's a lot of hardship, a lot of that. I for one, I've lost every body. I lost one of my family, my mom, my dad, my two brothers, and I'm the only one left.

and traverse sheer cliff faces. All of this with barely any water than what they can carry, little to no food, inadequate clothing, a terrible footwear, and no medical attention. They must walk past dead bodies and past people who might soon become dead bodies, as they beg for help, carry their children, their dreams, and sometimes each other. Across mountains and rivers and about Jiqito. They take what, for many of them will be the final steps of this part

of their journey. It's a journey that few of us can imagine, and they were lucky to be able to avoid. My own migration to the US sixteen years ago was much simpler and safer. But for migrants like James, the journey's worth it because what they're leaving behind is worse. His James describing the situation in the stative Cameroon. The situation in Cameroon is, how can I put it, very very very very difficult, especially in the anglophone part of

the country. Yeah, because for about five to six years there's a wall, the ongoing war in the anglophone crisis we are sort have been.

I am. It is not because they like it. It's because of the situation back at home and most of it, and most of the time it is the anglophone population that is of most of them. They choose this part because they'll not have a direct result to American.

Most of the time, I give up if there are no bites after a few months, and that's why you won't see me write about the people who try to hire mercenaries to intimidate voters in twenty twenty, or the Burmese rebels who if I did their revolution with co op produced tea or a surfing team in the Gaza strip, And on reflection, you probably won't hear about that last

one anywhere now. The media cycle has a way of coming around to these stories eventually, sure, but I not really want to go back to what it is who didn't give a sh about people before and only care about their stories now because they get more traffic. But there's one story I've never given up on. That's the story of the daddy En Gap and the people who risk their lives crossing it for a shot at the American dream. And at this point I do want to agnolige.

I'm incredibly grateful to the people I work with for trusting me when I ask them to pay for me to disappear in a dugout canoe into the jungle and come back two weeks later with a story. The Daddy and looms in the stories of migrants I meet in the US border as a sort of heart of darkness on what is a very difficult and dangerous journey. It's worse than the freight trains they hop on in Mexico, worse than the crowded buses, worse even than the months

of waiting for an asylum appointment. I've only believe that you can't really understand and write about things you haven't seen, smelt, and heard. So for years I've been asking, yet it is to send me to the tiny, en but our community on the banks of the river, so that I could share the final steps of this horrific journey with the people who see little option but to risk their

lives for a better future for their children. Because the US refuses to create more legal pathways, people instead take the sudden pathway straight up and down the mountains of the Darian rainforest. The journey will take them past the corpse of the people who never left. The terrain is too fierce for anyone to carry their remains out, so they must simply run there. As a reminder to migrants,

so they must keep going. It's a sort of deterrent through death that has been the unofficial and official US border policy for decades to turn or not. Once you're in the Darien, there's no turning back, and the lack of escape routes has made the gap popular among criminals, who commit untold numbers of sexual assaults, murders, and armed

robberies every year in the jungle. Despite this, more than half a million migrants made the perilous journey last year and if many, if not more, will do so this year. To understand the Dadian you have to first understand US immigration policy, which is something I talk about a lot on this podcast. I want to include here a clip amos Am I going from North Africa, who met my friends and helped them build shelters in the Cumba last year, explaining his journey to the United States.

So a lot of Africans can go to Brazil and from Brazil take the route.

we can't speak in our country. You know, if you speak in your in the street something like it, they will arrest you to and yeah, in the Jaid when you are not Muslim, when you will be like something like Christian or something else, they will arrest you. Yes, it was It was so so, so so the because living in Iran. But it's a wonderful country, but not government.

if I said I didn't prefer it that way. But I do always feel obliged to use the platform I have here to give people a chance to share their stories, their voices, and their struggles. So here's their message to you. We love you.

been the fastest. As long as these journeys are, that darien often stems out. There's the hardest part to understand why. I want to take you back to that shady spot by the river just a few minutes south of Bajoji Keepo. So what I'm doing right now, you can hear from my footsteps, is I'm doing what it taught me not to do. I'm walking along the migrant trail. There's lots of like vines and creepers. Oh fucking hell, that's me nely eating shit. There's little bits of tape marking the trail.

I think they just come down the river here and some local guys are pushing out wheelbarrows on the trail to dump trash. There's trash everywhere to fucking mess. The little wood arrows that they've carved just outside town to direct people into town, and if I heard, I can see migrants making what probably hopefully their final crossing of the river here. One thing I noticed was that as soon as I got out of sight in near shot of the town, the jungle seemed a lot more intimidating.

I'm somebod who spends a lot of time in the mountains, and I grew up playing in the woods. I'm comfortable outdoors, and I frequently camp and hike for days on my own. I like it better that way, and I might see more comfortable forty feet under the sea free diving, or three hours from the nearest road. Then I'm in a busy city sometimes, But in the jungle, after all the stories I'd heard that week, I was afraid. I keept scary. I don't know why. I mean, everything's new to me. I'm,

you know, relatively comfortable in the outdoors. But fucking there's new animals, there's new plants. I don't know what's poisonous. I don't know what's going to kill me. I don't know who's going to try and hurt me. Got another fucking horse, Jesus wept. I'm jumping out my skin everything. Now it's funny. I'm in a place that's beautiful, you know, like these better paradise plants are just just growing here. It's gorgeousness. Horses belong to people of the black community.

I suppose it's having snacks, you know, eating jungle horse food. And here here I am at the river. It's wide. Here it's sort of shallow, and it's been dammed up a little bit with rubbish. It's like flocks and jets some kind of stuff. And then this is where people cross because of that little dam. But it's still got some force to it, like you wouldn't want to fall and crack your head or you know, a lot of these folks can't swim even without the fear. It's hard going.

If you've only hiked on trails, you probably don't realize how much work goes into making that surface possible. There are no trail crews in the dry it and as a result, every step has the potential to results in a sprained ankle or another injury, which might sound trivial but can be faithal in such a remote and challenging place. Trail is all rocks, like maybe rocks the size of

a fist. By that way nows and then there are sort of in this area we only have the lower canopy, so we have ferns, we have reeds, bamboo plants growing really tall and straight. That's what they use for the poles, so the pitag was and then sort of low grassy kind of plants. And then where the migrants walk is just this muddy trail that every time it rains just turns into like ankle to knee deep mud. And I could see them making pretty slow progress along the trail

towards me. At the end of the day, as I took a piaguard back to Madagante, where I would be staying the night, I reflected again on this and the incredible tenacity it took for people with little outdoor experience and terrible equipment to path through the jungle. You know, I'm a fit person. I run ultra marathons, I used to be exercised for a living. And it's fucking hard wet. Everything's wet all the time. If you're wet from the rain, then you're wet. If you're wet from the sweat and

you're wet. If you cross rivers, you get wet. You just can't stay dry. And everyone's feet are just fucked when they get into town, like the size of the blisters I've seen. Like one lady had a cramp today where like it just locked up a whole she like I grabbed her or she was falling down and I was able to hold her up. But people are really

pushing themselves physically as well as psychologically. That river crossing south of Bajiqito was as far south as I was going to be able to get without being forced to be adjacted from Panama, and my request to take a boat or walk further south was denied by the Panamanian Ministry of Security. So the only part of the migrants journey I would share with them was the last kilometer

or so of their walk. Even then I wasn't really supposed to be leaving town at all, So several times of the days I spent in Bahajikito, log over my shoulder, hop down the river bank, jump across the stream, and lightly jog out of town. Once on the trail, I started to walk slowly and try and waive a groups of outcoming migrants. I didn't want to scare them. I offered to carry their bags and gant any help I could, supporting them as they walked towards their first meal and

clean drink of water in up to a week. Just getting to bahji Ghita was a journey in itself for me. I took two flights, a five hour drive, which was equally split between paved roads, roads that aspired to pavement, and dirt roads. At the end of our road journey, the Pan American Highway, the links Alaska to Argentina, seems to give up on fighting the jungle and peters out. Asphalt turned to worse asphalt, which turned to dirt, which turned to mud, which led us to a river. A driver, however,

was prepared for this. The drive here was mad, like that road was fucked. We're in this tiny little car. The driver took off his shoes and socks to conduct the more technical section of the drive, which I thought was quite amusing. And yeah, really steep, lots of holes, lots of potholes, you know, just really rutted out a kind of dirt road. And then we got here and talked to some guys, negotiated a price, and told them where we wanted to go, and they said, yeah, sure,

buy some water. You know, snow water on the way about three hours and so we bought some water right there, and yeah, here we are on the boat now, as you can hear, I recorded this on a piragua. It's a kind of dugout canoe with the hole made out of a single tree and a toothtroke motor bolted on the back. It's the only way to travel here other than on your feet, and it's the only way the

embarra can get the produced cigaret to market. The skill of the piragueros, the people who drive the piraguas, is incredible. They navigate parts of the river so shallow that they have to pull up the two stroke motor. And I noticed all the motors have propellers that are covered in chips and bashes from smacking into the rocks at the bottom. In the bow of the boat, I sat on top of my giant rucksack, marveling at the birds, insects and foliage of the jungle, and occasionally I jumped up to

make fairly useless contributions with the boat's bamboo pole. Under the close supervision of Marcellino, our driver, and are soon to be host. Homoti just laughed at me as I leaned my whole way into the pole, which notably slipped, and I tried to avoid falling face first into the chocolate brown water. On the way to Baajiquito, we passed several small limber villages. Little children waved at us from the banks or from the shallows of the river where

they washed and played. Adults slipped on. I doubtless why there's one nurse six tree. White dude was going the wrong way on the river for a migrant, but they smiled and waved back anyway. After an overnight flight, a five hour drive, and three hours in a dugout canoe, we rounded a corner in the river. Ba Jigito came into view. Over the last few years, it three oriented itself from a tiny indigenous village to an unofficial reception

center for migrants. On my hopelessly outdated topo map, the area has nothing but contours and green shading, no roads, no trails, no markets of human existence at all, and perhaps that's how the state sees this place. The Daddy n is as real to most Panamanians a Sesame street or Jurassic Park. But for the mb this has been their home since long before Panama and Columbia and even maps existed. A few dozen houses in the village, mostly built on stilts to avoid the seasonal floods, now offer

up their rooms as hostels to the migrants. Some of them have enclosed their bottom floor using plywood or cinder blow. Others have strung hammocks from their support posts. For four or five bugs, migrants can get their first good night's sleep since they left neck or Clee in Columbia as much as a week before. Along the main street, which is really just to raise concrete footpath about a meter across, you can buy a meal any of half a dozen

places for five bucks. You can get an hour of Wi Fi for a dollar, or charge your phone for at the same price. Cold drinks for a dollar as well. Are one of the many front rooms that have turned into small kiosks. And that's where the migrants I have been sitting down with at the river went when they arrived into town. I let them be for a while

I went off to interview more migrants. About a thousand of them arrive in this village every day each year since a pandemic has seen record numbers arrived, and the little village on the side of a hill, surrounded by palm trees and full of smiling children in their traditional brightly colored pollumers chasing chickens and dogs, has welcomed every single one of them. About a thousand of them arrive

in this town every day. Here they also take a boat from neck o'kley across the Golf of the Dabienne. They crossed on small motor boats to Capolgana or Kandel. Those are both towns on the western side of the Gulf of the Darienne. From there they begin their walk. Even though they're now north of the gulf, they're still in Colombia and on the Colombian side of the border. They're guided by guides, to whom they pay several hundred dollars and in return received protection and a wristband that

ensures they can walk without being robbed. Nobody I spoke to had made it this far without paying a guide. The area is largely under the control of the Golf Cartel, several members of which were sanctioned by the USA. While I was in the jungle. The marcus I spoke to didn't really have much bad to say about this part of their experience, but universally acknowledged that the next part was where they really confronted their fears and nightmares about

the Daddy. Inne he is one Venezuelan migrant sharing his experience.

They only have the supplies they carry, which often run out, or they jettison to stave weight On the incredibly steep mountain path they climb and descend those mountains across rivers, often without eating or drinking for days at a time. On the trail, they pass by the bodies of their fellow travelers. It's a constant reminder of the risk they're taking. If you ask people in Panamas, they'll tell you that Darian

is closed. Now, your president, nose Raoul Molino was elected on a promise to shut down the gap and this humanitarian crisis and deport more migrants with the US funding, and that funding has certainly arrived, with more than six million already spent since he took office in July. Since then, Panama has deported more than eleven hundred people to Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia,

and India. Each of these has been funded by US taxpayers. Obviously, the jungle isn't closed, and it can't really be closed, but in an interview before he was elected, Molino said that the border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, has moved to Panama, and that is something he can do with US support. I spoke to some venezuel And ladies to help them carry their bag because it's a steep hill, and they were saying that no

one has seen any barriers. I don't know anything about any barriers or any fences in a Darian and that like they hadn't heard it was closed. Evidently it's not a standing in front of one hundred people who just got off a boat from the day enn Hubris Aside, the rhetoric of closing the Dati m signals are turn not just in Panamanian politics, but in the way the

world sees and handles migration. The US has always sought to externalize its borders, from US train border patrol officers and Dominican Republic along the border is Haiti to DHS agents deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. As migration has become more politicized, the US has sought to move its enforcement away from prying eyes and from compassion, and instead brought more trauma to a place that is already so hard.

I've spent much of the last decade of my life watching the state try to bring the mountains and desert close to where I live under its control. I've stood with Kumia people as the government dynamited their graveyards. I found border wal contractors lost deep in the mountains. I've driven the impossibly steep concrete roads that they built, worried

about my truck turning end on end. I've seen billions of dollars thrown at these mountains, and I've seen people with twenty dollars angle grinders or ladders made of old palettes defeat the wall in moments. Trying to close borders doesn't work at home, and it won't work in the

Daddy and Gap either. Just building the roads to get the construction equipment into the gap is a gargantuan task in any attempt to create a barrier across sixty kilometer wide wilderness area, or simply push migrants onto other more dangerous routes into places where you can't build and the places where nobody can rescue you if you fall down or break your leg. That doesn't mean there's nothing the

US can do. I saw first hand the impact of Americans spending here as migrants had a reception center carded Lajas Blancas, had their families torn apart, and men, women and children cried as their parents and partners were taken away for a flight back to Columbia, Cuba, or Venezuela that my taxes helped to pay for. I console, the children with toys and stickers and something to eat as

their dads were loaded into a flatbed truck. A government didn't send money to feed these children, but it seemed to have the funds to fund their parents' deportation. By deporting people from Panama, the US effectively deprives them of much of the due process they should, in theory, have the right to in the United States, and the US can easily deport them back to places like Cuba and Venezuela, which it considers to be dictatorial regimes. The US does

not and cannot stop migration. People have always moved, and people will always want a better future for their children. What it can do is make it as painful and dangerous as possible. But the rais of word barriers in the daddy a gap which I've seen person on social media, didn't exist for the hundreds of migrants I spoke to. No one I asked had even seen them, but what they had seen was far worse.

She seemed remarkably resilient. She said the long bus ride she'd taken to get there one boring because she enjoyed looking out the window, and the whole journey was well, I'll let her say it em.

girl got a fever. She got a fever. But well, God is good that we pray a lot. I say that we don't know God so much in the church from the process and the process that we are in, and we don't know we can be so strong until we go through that storm and we see that He protext us. He knows that He was always there watching over us, taking care of us at all times.

people leaving India and then Haiti. It grew as conditions in Venezuela became more unsustainable and people found themselves too poor to stay home and too poor to travel north by any other means, and so they chose a deadly jungle over a future in a country where their votes don't matter. Last year, as many as half a million

people cross the jungle. This year we might see more migrants arriving about Jiguito spend the day in the village before taking off in a piagua of their own up to Lahas Blancas, the migrant reception center I mentioned earlier. They registered with Panamanian Board Patrol known by the acronym Cena Front, and they call their families to say they survived. Then they try at their blistered feet, enjoy the cooking of several of the families who have turned their homes

into sort of ersad's restaurants. They sleep on the floors of the houses or underneath them charge their phones for a dollar a time. Certainly migration has changed its town, and I want to talk about that more in tomorrow's episode. But despite more than a million people passing through this route, you don't find anti migrant sentiment here. Right now, despite the gap being a deadly de terrent, numbers are expected to reach to Equil again this year, maybe seven hundred

thousand people will walk the gap. But despite these numbers, which may seem high for a small country, I didn't really find much anti migroant sentiment in Panama as a whole. There's plenty of it in the US, though, and as the United States winds down its war and terror, it needs a new nebulous enemy to justify its military spending and to keep the security in surveillance companies donate into

politicians in their millions. In part it is found that by simply opening a floggate of weapons and funding, they can spew forth genocide and death in Palestine and keep some of its income streams. But it needs a more long term solution. There are only so many Palestinian babies that can balm, and we'll run out of Palestinians long before we run out of bombs. The USA is new enemy when it must seek out all over the world. It's a migrant. It's a woman I met carrying her

child across the mountains. The little Venezuelan girl throwing bottle caps into a cinder block with me to pass the time as she asked me questions about America. It's a twenty one year old man whose remains my friends found

in the border on a hot day this September. The US will stop at nothing and fining and destroying the migrant, and just as it did in the War on Terror, it will find fast friends in states desperate to avail themselves the seemingly unlimited flow of resources the US dedicates to keeping its conflicts out of the sights and the mines of its citizens. The USA's open hostility to migrants isn't something that's unknown here. Everyone I met knew about it.

Several of them had watched with horror as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued not about how to treat migrants but about who could turn more of them away in a recent presidential debate. Every migrant I met had questioned about CBP, one about US asylum policy, and about how they could get to the US before a second Trump administration. Despite this, they all clung to their versions of the

American dream. They wanted to work and be paid a fair wage, to send their kids to school and maybe to college, to feel safe in their homes, and to be able to speak and dress as they wished without fearing consequences. All of those things are in periling this country too, and they know that, but they still feel their dreams are worth the journey. For Noami, the little girl who took the daddy and in her stride, the American dream was pretty simple. She wanted two things. To see

Minnie Mouse and to see her around. Why am I gros estudia anymore? As to deer a deer? Every day for the past two years, the population of Bajo Chikito has more than tripled. At six in the morning, piraka has come from other Embra villages along the river, dozens

of them, all filled with orange life jackets. Migrants form a line so long that it stretches from the beach north of town all the way through the village and at the other side, and in groups of fifteen, they hand over their twenty five dollars each and get onto the piraguas. Each one puts on their bright orange life jacket, sits with their legs around the person in front, and they take off at the first official migrant reception center

in last blankets. As the last boat leaves, those who can't afford the trip begin a walk which could take eight hours. I couldn't walk with them, but I handed to group my water filter in one of those overbright energy bars that are basically trail mix in a rectangular format, and wish them the best of luck as they force

their tired legs and sore feet to walk again. The population of Barjaquito dropped back to five hundred or so indigenous people who live here, and the usual background noise of chattering dozens of languages gave way to crowing chickens and barking dogs. By the next morning, as migrants came walking in from the south, it would grow again to

fifteen hundred. For the last ten years or so, fewer than two thousand people crossed in a year, but numbers have been steadily increasing, and now the resident of Bajo Jiquito see the numbers that they saw in a year.

In a single weekend while you listen to this series, thousands of people will take their lives into their hands as they leap into mudcolored rivers, ascend towering mountains in the pouring rain, and desperately fight the urge to drink from a river polluted with human waste to decaying corpses.

All of those who survive will walk out of that jungle, up the river bank, along a muddy path, and into Bajo Chiquito, where they'll buy themselves a cold drink and enjoy the hospitality of the locals for a night before leaving to head north. At first, the locals told me didn't charge people at all. They were shocked to see the migrants and wanted to help them, But as numbers grew, they had to start asking for money as they couldn't

afford to feed and house all the migrants arriving. Over time, they said, the costs rose, and now a bed costs about five dollars for a night, and a meal's about the same. As they pointed out, that's less than half what I paid in Meta Tea, the nearest town a metait. He doesn't have to haul its supplies up the river in a canoe using seven dollars per gallon fuel in Bahjigito. I sat down with oder man whose front room I

just had luncheon. I wanted to get a sent to the change he'd seen over his lifetime in his community and how he felt about it.

should be doing more here. Even after all these years serving as the first Panamanian village, many thousands of people enter every year, they still don't have electricity or a road that's successible year round, both of which would make their lives and the transit of the migrants much safer. But that doesn't mean the state's totally absent here. It used to be possible for migrants to take a paragua from come Galina little further south up river and avoid

some of the most dangerous river crossings. Bonio told me that authorities in the Cormarca, which is like a state in the USA, have prohibited this. I wanted to see more of what was going on further south and what made it so dangerous, but I wasn't permitted to join a center front patrol going out that way despite my request. I asked Bonnio what made things more dangerous than that

part of the river. First, he explained that the wide and low lying beaches often seemed like good points for migrants to sleep, but that any rain in the mountains above, which result in a rapid increase for the water level, turning those beaches into rapids in minutes, he told me, looking down at the table. But not so long ago, a storm had washed away sleeping migrants, drowning them in their sleep and washing their remains towards his village. But terrible as it is, that isn't the only risk.

engage in robbery and even rape. So that's why in this community, in this village, in coordination with the community and the leaders, we will The leader spoke to the national government to ask for a chance to transport people from came Gaya so that nothing would happen to them. The government talked and talked, and for a while it was possible and it was safe, and nobody died and nobody robbed. It was all going well. But what happened.

We have a leader at Casika. I don't know if you've heard about it, but the regional leader he put a barrier, he stopped it.

with this. I also speke to is leader. She's the first woman in the whole con marker to hold such a position.

The next day we prepare everything at together with the Center front security.

They don't have to walk any further unless they run out of money for buses. I asked what happened when someone couldn't afford the right to last blankers?

legs and risk further sickness, robbery, and heat exhaustion. I also wanted to ask a leader about the problems with theft and sexual assault that the migrants encountered on their walk into Bajo Jiquito, and she was pretty forthright this was an issue for the state, not for her community to fix.

This pattern of the state failing to provide basic services, when Neil told me, is one that goes back a long time before the migrants began arriving here.

and without migrants. I wanted to visit another Embero village and after the break, we'll hear about that ring, all right. So I'm just in my hammock now kind of the end of the day. We were staying in another in village today just probably, I mean, but it's a kilometer two kilometers away, you know, probably a decent walk, but it was pretty fast in the Agua. Just it's a little more peaceful here. And a boat driver passed us

to stay his house. We said we would. You can probably hear like, I don't know how much of this is getting picked up. It's a nice little village, you know. The fucking way to the dogs have stopped. I guess when I wasn't in, I took a boat every evening to Maraganti. Maraganti is only a couple of kilometers away on a different branch of the river, but the walk might take hours through a thick jungle. A Perraguero had invited us to stay with his family and to see

another Inmbara village. I'm always down to sleep outside, so I gladly accepted his invitation and slung my hammock across his front porch after a long discussion on whether the dynamic cordage I was using would actually hold my weight, and on my part of probably ill advised free solo onto the roof of his house to find a good anchor point for my hammock. In my time in Maraganti, I found myself growing fonder and fond of his little community.

Everyone's doors were open and the village's children enjoyed unsupervised playtime everywhere. There was never not a pick up game going on at the concrete football and basketball court, and despite the fact that they were on average several feet short than me and playing on concrete without shoes, local kids humiliated me at a wide variety of sports with no electricity of them generators, one Wi Fi connection in the whole village as far as I can tell, and

a few hours to myself. In the evening, I happily settled into a routine of washing in a river along with everyone else in the hour before sunset, walking around town chatting with the inhabitants, who seemed surprised but happy to see a gangly British man ambling around their neighborhood and petting their dogs. Once it got dark, I'd spend my evening sitting in my hammer, because the grandchildren of our host asked me how to say various things in English.

I played with the little toys I always bring along in case I run into children on my work trips. Being in Maragantine made me think a lot about my own life and the US in general. I certainly have a lot more possessions here, but my neighbors don't let their kids run around in the streets, and cars would hit them if they did. People in my community, if the next door Wrapp is anything to go by, spend seeing mely countless hours bitching about the unhoused in other

people's children. But here everyone had a roof over their heads, and other people's children ran in and out my host's kitchen without anyone batting an eyelid. Aside from laughing at my paleness when I was washing in the river, nobody here seemed that concerned that I was different. They let me hold their babies while they cooked. They didn't overcharge me for the It was a water of snacks that

I brought from their front room convenience stores. What seemed that bothered about sharing their meals and their homes with me. At night, we sat on tiny plastic chairs and talked about our shared interest in woodwork and what they wanted for their children. We talked about their boats and the river, and about how terrible things must be for migrants to risk their lives and abandon their homes making the journey across these mountains that the Embrara and their Kuna neighbors

call home. Ever since I left their village, I've been thinking a lot about the part of The Dawn of Everything in which Grab and Wengrove detail how many indigenous people were adopted into colonial society but chose to return to their communities. How by settlers in indigenous communities often

chose to remain among the indigenous communities. I don't wish to romanticize the very real struggles the Mbra have with their economic marginalization and lack of access to basic services compared to other Panamanians, But I just want to reflect on the fact that there was something really special about the little river community, where dogs and chickens and ducks woke me up in the morning, little children welcome me

back evening. They told me what they did at school, or just a little ball back and forth, and seemed entirely comfortable chatting to an adult from across the world. The people a Baho Jiqito have shown that same hospitality to migrants and indeed to me, and so I wanted to ask the village leader how migration had changed her community. Like everyone else I spoke to, she insisted that they had held on to important parts of their culture, which he illustrated by giving me a history lesson.

or east to west. The thin strip of land that joins the two American continents has been at the crossroads of the world for half a millennium. Archaeological digs in a region show that there were once roads, and that gold and jade came here from Afar. This ritinalization is one that Vasco Nunies de Balboa first encountered, and it was they who first told him that their land lay

between two oceans. It was somewhere just to the south of where I was staying that exactly five hundred eleven years ago to the day, Barboa became the first European to set eyes upon the Pacific. Since Barbara, many other colonizers have come to Dabienne to pit their notions of superiority against the might of the rainforest. The Kingdom of Scotland sent a group of settlers here in the seventeenth century,

mounted the side. This isn't a place with any similarity to Scotland, and it's easy enough to see why the plan failed, killed three out of four colonists and essentially bankrupted an entire nation in two years, forcing it into a colonial relationship with its own with its neighbor to the south. After the Scots left, having failed to create what they'd hoped would be a quote Scottish Amsterdam of the Indies and a Spanish found a flatter and easier

connection between the Pacific and Caribbean. The Dadian region returned to its indigenous people, whose home it remains, but over the course of several hundred years, many empires have come to the dai En to die. The French tried to build a sea level callout not so far from here,

the canal without locks, but they ultimately failed. The US tried in the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventies to forge a route to build a canal to get east coast Banks Acces to west coast Gold, before eventually finding an easy route further north. A century later, the US and Panama openly discussed dropping nuclear bombs on the jungle to make it passable and to allow the construction of a road.

The US offered to shoulder two thirds at a cost of building such a road, and hoped to have the Pan American Highway completed in time for its nineteen seventy six by centennial, but the GAP's hostility in the growing environmental movement, as well as a desire to protect US livestock from a foot of mouth disease it's endemic in South America. One the day, the gap remained a gap

latly without the influence of the state. In the nineteen seventies, a British Army expedition traversed to Dadien in two range rovers. Assisted by horses, parachute drop resupplies and a team of engineers, they crossed the jungle in ninety six days. They had to make their own bugnets for their horses out of the parachutes, so were used to drop corn cobs to

the animals and rice for the humans. Expedition leader and seasons explorer, as well as possibly the most British Man in history, Lieutenant Colonel John Blashford Snell wrote, without doubt it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Calling the daddi Enne a god forsaken place, the daddy Inn is one of the wettest places on the planet. A particularly cruel twist for that would be colonizers from Scotland.

In the months before I came here, I spent hours trying to work out how to water proof my podcast equipment, and most of what you're hearing is recorded on a voice recorder that I sealed up with gasket maker, shoved inside a condom, inside a dry bag, inside a pelican case. This rain causes flash flooding, the kind which sweeps whole villages away. The rivers in the Gap onont Bridge largely

because they simply wash away bridges after a storm. On our journey to Bahojigito, I saw the remains of bridges that had dared to try. That's why my hosts built their houses on stilts, and it's on those stilts that I slung my hammock in Maraganti. Ever since the failed Daddian scheme, the Gap has been constructed in the Western imagination as the deepest and darkest jungle. The Gap today is home to every type of malaria and numerous others diseases.

There are deadly vipers, deadly spiders, big cats, and as if the natural threats were not enough, the US dropped bombs here in the Cold Wars test this destructive might against one of the few areas of the planet that hadn't been made amenable to capitalism. Many of them remain unexploded in the mountains. Certainly the physical geography of the Dallienne posted a challenge, but I would argue that the imaginative geography of the gap which is a greater impediment

to travelers. In Spanish they call it the top on the Stopper. Local legend has it that the Spanish conquistado, one of the first to take his last breaths in the waters of Dallienne. Rivers carved to phrase into the rock,

which is endured long after he expired. When you go to the dalli Ennes and trust yourself to Mary, for in her hands of the entrance and he gods the exit, it doesn't sound that different to the things I heard from migrants and in the modern day they'll tell you about the horrific tiktoks they saw before they enter the gap, and the decaying remains fellow travelers they saw as they

passed through. Media reports in a Gap consistently referred to it as a nomad's land, but of course it's very much someone's land, the land of the indigenous people who have been here long before countries, borders or reporters. While it may have remained hostile to appolism in the state, and it can be deadly for unexperienced travelers. It's supported

life for thousands of years. And a way to Bahjigito, I was reminded of just how comfortable my hosts were in a place where I felt so out of place. So as we were coming, we got caught in a huge range storm, just absolutely bucketing it down suddenly and pulled in to a little sort of or just a flat area of might really. I helped out to the boat and next thing I know, our boat guide ran into jungle, chopped some huge palm leaves down and brought them back to me to cover me in my bag. Well,

the umber might have preserved their comfort and culture. It's undeniable that migrat should have made a huge economic impact. And fifty nine migrants left on one of the days I was able to get numbers from Senaflunt. Each of them paid twenty five dollars for pedagua, about ten dollars for food and lodging, and maybe Wi Fi and pread a few bucks more for clean clothes or a pair of off bran crops to let their feet heel from

three days have been constantly wet. At a conservative estimate, that's a little more than thirty three thousand per day raughly the GDP per capita of Panama. That's a lot of money down here, especially for community which has been alienated and exploited for solo. Using this money, people have been closed the bottom floors of their homes to provide more space to house migrants. All around the village, they're building better homes. Some of them have satellite internet now

or Starlink or bigger and more reliable generators. This money has been spread around the Amberak communities in the area, and every morning each of them sent pedaguas to transport

the migrants, as almost sixty a needed every day. Rolling out of Madaganti at five in the morning as almost the entire adult male population of the village joined us in a huge flatilla of two stroke smoke dugout canoes and the morning mists still sat in the river was an incredible experience and this is doubtless an industry for the whole area.

be safe and their community to stay the same. They might not be able to sell meals to the migrants this way, or charge and for Wi Fi or phone charging, but they will be able to live a little more peacefully. Yamba have gone out of their way to ensure migrant safety. They're the ones who mandate life jackets, and the ones who build a house for doctors, and they're the ones

who send free boats for women and children. Of course they have an economic incentive to do this, but there nearly a week living with them, I didn't hear them bad mouth for migrants, and nor did I hear the migrants complain about the way they were treated in the village of barj Juquito. But before they get to the village of Barjuquito, migrants aren't safe, and if you ask them, they'll tell you it's indigenous people who are robbing and

threatening them. Deeper into the jungle. Undoubtedly, robbery, sexual assault a murderer not uncommon. In the Daddy and Gap. You can hear anecdotes of these on a daily basis in ba Juquito, and some of the stories I heard and things I saw are among the most horrific experiences I've had in years of reporting on pretty terrible things. I haven't included a great many of them here because I think it's hard for people to meaningfully consent in those

kinds of circumstances. But yesterday you heard about the human remains that almost everyone featured in this series had to walk past. This is a problem that's getting worse, not better. In just one week in February, medisanten Fontierre, the NGO that Americans called Doctors without Borders, treated one hundred and thirteen people, including nine children, after they were sexually assaulted

by criminal groups in a Darienne. This number is close to one hundred and twenty people treated during the whole of January. These figures are double the monthly average tree in twenty twenty three, when six hundred and seventy six people were treated for the whole year. As you heard before, this is a problem that people in the community sometimes acknowledge, and as a village leader mentioned, it's one that could be solved as the state would live up to its

obligation to protect migrants within its borders. The leader also shares me that the community has its own punishment mechanisms.

the stick. Aside from these punishments, the community hasn't done much to stop things happening in the jungle, and I'm not sure if it's really able to. They're Panamanian, they say, in the States responsible for the safety of migrants when it's borders, and while it does send center front patrols into jungle. The state doesn't appear to be doing much

protect migrants of sexual assault, robbery or murder. Early this year, the state did take decisive action to eject Made Saint san Fentier after not reviewing their permission to work in the Darienne. This is quite a challenging permission to obtain, even as a solo journalist. It took months for me to get mine, forcing me to rebook my flight several times. I had various explanations for why MSF were not allowed

to keep working. I couldn't get an official response, but it's probably worth noting that they published a report headlined lack of action, she's sharp rise in sexual violence on people transiting the dari Enne Gap on the twenty ninth of February, and they refused permission to remain in the region in the first week of March. MSF was allowed to return in October of this year and wouldn't comment further than the following statement, which they emailed me in

mid October. In October of twenty twenty four, MSF resumed medical and humanitarian activities at Lahas Blanca's migration Reception center, located at the edge of the dai in jungle. After Panamanian authorities approved a three month medical intervention. MSF welcomes its decision and advocates to collaborate closely with Panama's Ministry of Health to provide comprehensive medical care to migrants crossing this route, as well as to the local population of

the area. Right now, UNICEF med Saint Dumont Corporate and Espanola and the Red Cross are helping migrants in Bauciquito. UNICEF in salt showers and toilets, Global Brigades in unifests provided taps and drinking water, and the medical endeos provide healthcare, which is fighting saving lives and providing survivors of sexual assault with medical care in a seventy two hour window

where it can be most beneficial. It's worth noting that most migrants too are sexually assaulted won't stay depressed charges. I know of one case of sexual assault of a child while I was there, but the family wanted to continue their journey and so the charges won't be pressed. This makes it very hard to ascertain how many cases a sexual assault there are in a dai and every year, aside from through medical reports from NGOs, and those only include the people who make it to ba alahas blancats.

The numbers are clearly high, and it's a fear that many migrants a articulated to me. In the jungle, they're their most vulnerable, they said. Most people robbed, they tell me, held by armed attackers carrying guns and machetes. But once a migrants set foot in Baju Jiqito, they're momentarily safe from rory and assault. For the first time in days. They can sleep without worry being attacked or washed away, and the rest of their journeys north they'll face set

threat again, but that's not what's on their mind. When they enter town. All they want is a cold drink and a warm meal and a chance to rest their aching feet. It's the chance that they have thanks to the Ambra people who receive them there. And I want to end with Buono and his reflection on the suffering people endure on their way to eat rice and plantain in his little front room cafe.

it's true. Yeah, the darien is dangerous, but nothing is impossible. We walk hand in hand with God and with the faith that we will get there. But that doesn't mean it isn't difficult. But I'll say it again, it's not impossible. You suffer, you cry, you go hungry cold, but thank God we made it through.

stay away. I've been in the jungle before, in the Rwanda Congo borderlands and in Venezuela, but I've never really felt the sense of foreboding I did as we rode down the river, protected only by our hollow log, looking into the triple canopy forest, and knowing that if I walked long enough in the shadows, I'd be confronted with the remains of people I might have interviewed if it hadn't been for a rolled ankle, a slippery rock, or a

desperate sip of water. To understand what drives people to enter the jungle with their children and their dreams, I think we also have to understand what drives them to leave wherever they're living. And that's what I want to talk about today. The story of migrants crossing the Daddy

and Gap is an American one. It's impossible to disentangle the people making this dangerous journey from the history of support for dictatorship sanctions, an imperial plunder that ties to the United States to its American brothers and sisters in the South. Sometimes I play a game with myself at the border where I try and meet people from all the countries named in Washington bullets in a single day. Since Biden bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal, it's become a lot easier,

but Tibet can be hard. For two hundred years since President Monroe gave his State of the Union address in December eighteen twenty three, the US has seen the Western hemisphere is its sphere of influence. While is opposed old fashioned colonialism, it has used less avert methods of control,

as well as avert military force across the hemisphere. For much of the last century, it supported and installed dictators who would prevent what it saw as a threat of state socialism in its sphere of influence, and allowed them to create economic and political climates that were unsurvivable for

the majority and extremely profitable for US based corporations. The direct result of this policy has been economic insecurity, political instability, and state violence across South and Central America, resulting in people making the very natural humor decision to flee to somewhere safer. As in so many other empires, they've made the choice to lead a destabilized colonial periphery. Safety and

stability in the metropol for more than a century. Money and good to be able to travel seamlessly up and down the continent, but people have not. The bananaread for breakfast this morning made the journey in a few days, but people take months, if not years, pay thousands of dollars, climb mountains, forded rivers, and risk their lives on trains and buses that cost a lot more than the flights I took to Panama, but offer considerably less comfort and safety.

As climate change has have greater impacts, more and more people are forced to leave their homes of their livelihoods become less sustainable. The Guna, the indigenous people of the Panamanian coast in an area called Guna Yala, are having to withdraw from some of their islands because of sea

level rise. Right now, agriculture across the world is increasingly threatened by extreme weather and rising temperatures, and Orotionans are less able to sustain life than they once were due to pollution and overfishing, forced to leave their homes as people have been for millennia by weather patterns changing people head to places that have a want caused much of the ear issue, and tried to insulate themselves from its consequences.

Their American dreams are modest to overcome the crippling low paid. They received a home to bring their children up in a place where they have a good chance of surviving their twenties, to work and get paid enough to get by. They want to be able to protest and not get a shot, and to look forward to the future, not fear it. These aren't guaranteed in the USA, and as many of you listening will know, it can be hard

for us to make ends meet here as well. But despite what you see on social and legacy media, things are unlikely to become as bad here as they are in Venezuela, Cameroon or Iran anytime soon. I've lived in Venezuela, specifically in the formerly Javista neighborhood of La Pastora in Caracas, and I've seen how hard it is for my friends who still live there, even for people with no other disadvantages, making rent and feeding your family can be a challenge.

That's part of why Venezuelan people make up the majority of the folks. I met men Daddy in so much so that I'd slip back into using Venezuelan slang in Spanish, and after a few days of seeing the same people engaging in the kind of friendly mockery and banter that I remember well from Caracas, mostly the super form of asking them why they crossed Daddy and gap in Man

United shirts or worse yet, in a Chelsea shit. It's important to steal moments of humor in these difficult times, to laugh a little among all the suffering, and that's something people in Venezuela have done very well for a very long time. But despite their humor, I could tell the journey had a serious impact on the people I spoke to.

experiences they had. They said, seen deputies and they couldn't stop thinking about what happened if they'd fallen, and they wanted to know how when if the dead people's family would ever find out.

you just want to hurry past. Not that you wouldn't want to get the documentation from the body and deliver it and tell them how this person that passed away? But how dare you just go grabbing a dead body.

and Moduro responded with bullets. Gonzales fled to the Dutch and then the Spanish embassy, and later claimed asylum in Spain, where his family lived. But for regular working class Venezuelan's there's no option to hop on a flight to safety. Instead, they have to begin the long walk north. As many Venezuelans I spoke to told me, in addition to the electoral fraud, Venezuela is undergoing an economic collapse. At least

an the Chavis. They said most people could eat. When I lived in La Pastora, I was able to access medical care from Cuban doctors. Now they say things have become unsurvival.

even those with whom they didn't share a language. Christian, who he heard from earlier, showed me how he'd carried someone else's child on his shoulders until he fell and hurt his knee. We all help.

who had done just that served as a grisly reminder. Later, little boys maybe eight to ten years old gleefully recounted seeing a dead body on which the head had quote exploded while their parents winked. In recollection, I wanted to understand a bit more of what they were fleeing. That made it worth getting through all this.

and the group that was behind us got robbed. They raped women in that group.

in them that Lisa Cubans seemed to have doctors. Venezuela has an eighty percent poverty right now. Though it sits on one of the largest oil reserves of any country on Earth. It's been plagued by planmmeting oil prices in the years of hyperinflation, which got so bad at one point the shots stopped putting price tags on things and

relied on staff to give up to the minute prices. Today, alongside a regime that lacks legitimacy, a state that readily uses horrific violence against his people, an election that was essentially ignored, Venezuelans must also deal with shortages of basic goods, poverty, and malnutrition. And like Cubans who have a relatively good political lobby in the USA, Venezuelan's coming to the USA

do not benefit from special laws. Cubans under the Cuban Adjustment Act have a part of the citizenship and permanence once they set foot on US soil. Venezuelans do not. They're covered by something called a temporary protected status, but this does not afford them much in the way of stability, protection or a secure future. Erekapinhidro of Valatolado, an incredible organization, does valuable work with migrant legal aid advocacy and humanitarian relief, explaining just how temporary a TPS is.

been designated. But basically the way it works is they designate a country and so if you were in the United States before that designation date, you can apply for temporary protected status within you know, a designated time period, and you get a work permit. It's valid for six, twelve or eighteen months, and then two months before it expires. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has to

say whether or not they're going to reauthorize GPS. So there's like eight hundred and sixty thousand people in the US who have temporary protected status and it's not a path of citizenship. So basically people are just in limbo sometimes for decades, you know. They just have to reapply for this permit every eighteen months. So I have quite a few salvador and friends who in the United States

since the nineties. They have kids, some of them acquirrent kids who are US citizen and they can't become permanent residents or have a pass of citizenship didn't. Most they leave the country and either come back with another type of parole or apply through a consulate, which many of them are just not willing to take that risk.

government coming after them. Such things, they said, are reserved for the wealthier citizens, people like Gonzales, who's asylum claim and stays at the Dutch and Spanish embassies, and who's right to join his family in exile, are all luxuries that most of his country people can't expect. It's dead. Most Venezualians must ride basses through Columbia, then walk north through the jungle buses, stir away on trains, or walk

again all the way to the border. They all lamented to Dadian crossing, and so they wouldn't advise it without other options. They all made it anyway. Community. See, they don't.

in the United States. In Mexico, you can get protection based on generalized conditions in your country, and so you know, Venezuelans tweeing economic collapse or even Central Americans fleeing extreme violence have a much easier time beating protection in Mexico than they would in the United States because of that

kind of extra category of protection in Mexico. The issue with Mexico is just the very limited capacity of this asylum system overall, and the very dangerous conditions in which people are forced to wait while their cases are adjudicated.

And the Department of Homeland Security just announced that they are not renewing parole for people who are already in the United States. So people from those four countries who were in the US had up to two years of humanitarian parole which is not being renewed, so they either would need to apply for something else, or go back to their country, or just, I guess, stay in the United States undocumented until their cody.

give them a chance in life. I prepared a lot for this trip, and I tried to search for everything had my experience on the internet. But one thing I really didn't expect to learn in the jungle is just how much it's possible for parents to love their kids. I watched exhausted mothers hoist their babies onto their shoulders to keep walking, and somehow come up with a story that made the whole thing an adventure, not a tragedy, then did the same thing again the next day without

sleeping or eating. I watched fathers carefully lay out their sleeping mac so the children could rest while they tried to do the same on the dirt or hardwood floors every day as their savings grew lower and they outlooked more bleak, watch parents try to smile for their kids.

The sacrifices I saw them make, starving for days to give their kids something to eat, or spending their last remaining dollar on clean clothes for their kids while they walked barefoo and couldn't afford shoes really brought home for me the desire these families had for better future and the sacrifices they're willing to make for one. Another week later, it's still hard for me to accept that I'm home safely and they're still in as much danger, if not more.

For a while in Caracas, I lived in a social center in La Pastora. I didn't pay rent, but there was a small, empty room and no one seemed to mind. Every day I talked to strangers, big friends, and try and learn something new. The situation there wasn't ideal. For one thing, we didn't really have showers, and also I got robbed at gunpoint. So for most of my time in the country, I stayed with the Chilean family i'd met. They welcomed me a more or less total stranger, into

their homes and lives. In the evenings, we spent hours talking and they'd tell me stories about how they'd suffered under Pinochet, the hopes they'd had for their country, and how they'd had to flee to Krakas tens of thousands of their fellow Chileans. They introduced me to Victor Hara and Joy Pan. I introduced them to chumber Wamba, and we shared an affection for George Orwell. The song you heard after the adverts was not in fact Chumberwamba, but

Chilean left his folk musician, Victor Haa. He's playing Eldreto de vi videnpaz the right to live in Peace in English, and it's one of his most famous songs. It confronts the US War in Vietnam. Later, after haw I was tortured and murdered by the Pinochet regime, it became an anthem of protest in the country. Parah and his friend Pabu and No Ruda were both symbols of the cultural power of the Chilean people and the brutality of the Pinochet regime, who broke the hands he used to play

his guitar before they killed him. Haah and the Rudah both moved in the same revolutionary artistic circles as my Chilean host in Venezuela. At night, they tell me stories about the time they spent together. We'd have to speak loudly, as a man who adopted me as a sort of surrogate grandson had permanent hearing damage from the torture he'd endured under the same regime. Luckily, he'd been able to flee with his wife to Venezuela, where they were welcomed.

They never returned to Chile and happily lived out the rest of their lives listening to their Victor Hara records in Caracas and living the ideals that have seen them persecuted. Their kindness to me, a nineteen year old stranger with terrible Spanish and nowhere to sleep at night, reflected the kindness they'd received, and I've tried to reflect it in turn ever since.

I left my ficture while she made a call and bumped into some little children playing a game where they throw water bottle caps into half a breeze block from various distance, each of them counting how many they could land. I sat down next to them, put maricorder on the ground and asked nicely if I could join them. That's like a tiny pit buss. One of the kids bought me a pile of bottle tops, and I chatted with them as we threw a bottle cap to the broken

piece of concrete. What was it like in America? They asked. They's had a lot of questions about Africa, having probably met African kids in the casita just across the way. Do they have big buildings in Africa? Does it rain there? How long does it take to get there in a bus? Then they tested by venezuela and legitimacy by drawing me in a ripper in my notebook, and I'm asking him if I knew what it was, what I passed a test?

They asked me how to say some things in English, and they showed me the toys they bought with them, which were very few. One of them had a small plastic cow of which he was very proud on avoca. After a while, they asked what I was doing, and I showed them how I record interviews, at which point they began recording themselves and each other, wildly stabbing at the buttons on my recorder, which I will admit scared the crap out of me, but I didn't have the

heart to take it off. Then they stroked the fluffy WIMD protector I use on my microphone. It told me it was like a tiny teddy bear. Eventually I was able to trade my recorder for several small wooden animals I'd brought with me as gifts, which seemed to be a deal. The left all of us feelings that we come out ahead. They seemed to unbothered by the suffering around them. But Las Blancas is no place for children. They should be in school, learning the English phrases they

kept repeating to me every time I saw them. But for a chance to use their English, they first had to endure month more danger and deprivation. I guess, as son some slightly hold A. Children made the journey alone or almost alone. They were accompanied by a spaniel called Channel. I saw a future while as people are characters them through the Darien Gap. But to my ANALYSI this is the first spaniel that has made the treacherous crossing.

CBP one appointment. Sometimes they'll just send themselves to either Chiapa's an increasingly to Basco so Viere. Mossau, which is where people are arriving in Tabasco has one shelter and I think the capacity is around two hundred and fifty three hundred people, and earlier this year they were sending twenty thousand migrants a month there and then they posted the military yips so that people can't leave.

where they're from. About half the groups I saw had Venezuelan flags and the cats or backpacks, but they're also very aware of the betrayal they get as Venezuelans and the US media and many of them made the very valid point if American is afraid of Venezuela gangs, they ought to consider how much more afraid people are in a country where they actually exist. N Solana, I'm thirteen.

which is only offered English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Less than fifteen percent of asylum cases are conducted in English, but the app ignores huge toasts of the world outside the Western hemisphere. But Jikito, I use French to speak to min who students speak English, and began to notice the complete absence of signage, and I think other as Spanish and sometimes English Creole. This is likely an issue

throughout that long journeys. Here's one migrant from Angola and I should probably at this point that Angolan people tend to speak Portuguese, it's a national language, but French with the language I shared with some of them, as I don't speak Portuguese.

made it despite the suffering. But God was with us that is what is important.

border between ports of entry. I've met hundreds of migrants, mainly Mauritanians and Guineans, who have made this difficult choice since bidons of Silent Bank came into force. Due to the distance, African migrants also face a longer, more expensive, and more dangerous journey. His premier from Zimbabwe, describing her journey just to get to Bao Jiquito.

making their asylum process harder. Unlike migrants from the Western Hemisphere, they might struggle to find solidarity networks even inside the USA without a significant diaspora, and many of the migrants I met in the jungle have struggled to find sponsors los Just the people I spoke to here, including Primrose and her daughter, are still looking for someone to give them a helping hand as they start their new life. We spoke a lot over the week I is there,

and we've spoken most days since. It's heartbreaking for me to see her daughter going for months without education or even a safe place to sleep. I've seen photos of them sleeping on the street, They've ridden crowded buses north, and I've heard their frustrated attempts to comply with the arcane and complicated restrictions on their right to come here

and ask for help. And it's been really hard since I got home to reconcile this with a national discussion that seems to see migration as a number that we have to decrease. A migrants are something other than people who want to come here for all the same reasons, iding happily and peaceably as our neighbors. Now that they've come this far, magants from outside the Western hemisphere have

to keep going. They kind of even file their claims on CBP one until they make it to Tapatula, which is hundreds of dollars and thousands of kilometers from Panama. They likely don't have the funds to go back home even if they want to, and they are far more likely to be robbed or kidnapped along the way. However, their story is often not told. Reporting on the board is still largely focused on Spanish speaking migrants, with some space of Chinese or Haitians, but magots from Africa rarely

get much care or attention in the media. In part, this has helped them avoid the demonization that Venezuelan migrants are all too aware of, but in part it also leads to a lack of concern for their needs. I want to end today with Gabriel from Equatorial Guinea sharing his message for Americans.

So I have a story about running into Manuchow once where he was busking, but that's not what I want to share today. Because I'm technology challenged, I can't seem to get my phone to download songs, but I've managed to download the same Manu Chow playlist that I ripped off a rewriteable CD when I was in high school and put it on the various headphones and garment watches that I've had of the last two decades or so. When I'm away for work, I like to run whenever

I can. Obviously I wasn't just going to go for a jog straight into the Darien Gap, but once we were out of Bajajiqito, it gave me some time to run and think and process the things that I've seen, And while I do that, I listen to the same doz or so MP three files. I was listening to this song one day after I got back from Lahas Blancas, as I sweated my way up ahead in the rainforest, hoping to see a sloth. I didn't see a sloth, but it seemed like an appropriate soundtrack. Manuchoo himself as

a child of refugees from Francoist Spain. He sings in French and Spanish, willoff and Galician and Portuguese, among other languages, often several of them in the same song, the product of growing up among other migrants of diverse backgrounds. I like the way he plays with language because it reminds me of the way I so often speak to my

friends Spanglish, for example, or Frannglais. It's the way people talk in border regions and refugee camps, languages that don't have the support of a state or the academy, but nonetheless convey so much meaning for so many people. That song, in particular reminds me of my first time reading about Zapatismo in a tiny anarchist cafe in the West Midlands.

I remember being struck as a kid from europ who would frequently drive to France or Belgium to race bikes and buy cheap beer, that the USA still maintained a fortified border with Mexico. People couldn't travel freely, but money could. With its realization and the writings in particular of Suquam and Temar course, along with my talks in Spain to old anarchists, that encouraged me to learn Spanish, which I pursued by spending months in Spain and Venezuela and learning

thanks to the patient to the people around me. It was a new anarchism which came from the periphery, not only a liberal cores, which gave me my first serious politics. I traveled to Venezuela to understand the revolution there. I did a PhD to try and understand the revolution in Spain. It's all very well understanding things, but I think it's much more important to do things, and I tried to

practice mutual aid as much as I can. Since I got back from the daddy En, I've loaded up a heavy backpack and carried water into the desert and spent hours trying to connect the friends I made in the jungle with services along the way. In the face of so much cruelty, it feels good to be doing something to help and carrying the water is away. I can make a material difference in a terrible situation. But in all my time reporting, I've really never felt as disempowered

and helpless as I did in Last Blancas. Here at the first official migrant reception center off to Daddi Enne, the Panamanian government registers migrants. NGO's offer a few services, and the US funded process of deportation for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela and India begins. Some of those sent to India might well be Nepalese who often travel on fake Indian passports.

The little cluster of cheap tents, shipping container offices, un shelters, and barbed wire offences is where the rubber meets a road for the USA's border and migration policy, and it's heartbreaking to witness. As migrants were called out to the security office to begin the deportation process. I tried to narrate the scene into my voice recorder, but I struggled, in part because their family members asked me questions, hoping

I can help. Yeah, planings on the side, But in a larger part, this was also difficult because I couldn't help, and I deeply wanted to. The best I could offer was an arm around someone's shoulder and the promise to email any one who I could think of, and asked what was going on? This guy's just sobbing. Yeah, that's really tough. Some people's parents, some people's partners, some who I'll explain exactly what was happening in a moment, but

first I want to explain how I got here. On the day we left Maraganti, we set off at the same time some migrants who are making their own journey to last Blankets. PA. Is carrying only myself and my fixed daddy and a pe aguero, so we're moving a lot faster than the boats full of migrants. On the way north. We passed them, they smiled and waves as we rode by. Many of them had met me the day before. All of them were ecstatic to have survived

the daddy enn and be heading north. Yeah, it's a pretty busy stretcher ray that it's party three or four pedaguas full of migrant Hello. There are kids shogging at me. And taught them some English words yesterday and they're shouting them back to me today, which is nice.

there to meet them. We're just walking into Lahas Blancas. Hectic here so it's a new shop here, and outside the shop they've made like a line of outlets to charge people. It's a dollar an hour to charge your telephone. As we go in, there are a row of like kind of sheds which represent shops. And then further in, every ngo has its own little kind of shed. They're all covered in tarps. They're like canvas and tarp tents actually here so see unief, I see, oh I am yeah,

they have that sort of little tent office here. I guess see here as for example, has information psychological support, safe space for women, Wonnief has some workshops for children, and then you know they're hours. I guess, nice little chairs in there and yeah, see you can't take photographs in there, which is good. Yeah, and then it's just a crowd of people coming out. And there's also more little Mormon situation. See oh yeah, I guess see. Oh I am are supported by Church of Jesus Christ on

bat Today Saints. Then the Red Cross has got a shipping container. I've been hoping last blank Cuts would be a better scene than baj Jugito, with more organized sleeping arrangements and hopefully basic necessities like clean water, food and Wi Fi provided by their numerous NGOs who work there. But if anythink it was worse in Baja Jigito. In Bajuquito, migrants were exhausted, but also ecstatic to be at the jungle. They knew they'd be moving forward the next day and

for a few bucks. Again, I don't think they needed. In the village, the locals told me that if kids didn't have the money to eat, they fed them for free. I didn't see this, but normally seen that they're having a very hard time, and any of the days of vice to the village at least not for fine actual reasons. Magots can get as far as Bahol Jiguito on a

few hundred dollars in their tenasty. They pay Columbian guides a few hundred bucks to bring them across the ocean from Necople and to walk them from the border, and they parry them bar Perraguero's twenty five bucks for the ride up the river. But once they get to last Blankerts. For a good number of migrants, their journey grinds to a halt. Many of them told me they've been stuck in the camp for weeks or even months because they couldn't get that sixty dollars that they needed to pay

for their travel north. There's no Western Union in the camp, and the only way to transfer money is very local intermediary who charges between twenty and twenty five percent of the sum being transferred as a fee. In the morning, migrants arrive on their peraguas just as we did. I drop down the boat ramp when I saw them to help with their bags and ask about their journey from there they formed two lines, one for men and one for women and children. They have their bag search and

their passport checked. They've given a welcome kit for the Red Cross with some basic necessities toilet paper, two to brush, some soap, stuff like that, or some of them get a kid. When the kids ran out, it was long before the line of people did. By the time the men were finished, they were given little more than a shrug and good wishes by the Red Cross volunteers and allowed to head off into the camp. Within the camp, there are a few rows of small casitas that are

allocated to u accompany children and families. They're a little more than four walls in a roof, but they offer a bit of privacy for most migrants, though there isn't space and they have to search for a spot of empty ground in the crowded camp where they can pitch the same tents they bought a necko cley. The Wi Fi which a Red Cross usually provides, wasn't working when I arrived, so I had to let people hot spot

off my phone all day. At least the promised food really was free, but the migrants told me it was far from good. Still, this is supposed to be a temporary camp. People register here, get any medical attention they need, and then move forward to Costa Rica. That's the theory anyway. In practice, if you can't get the sixty bucks, you need to move forward, or so one stole it for me in the jungle, or you are forced to walk to the camp because you didn't have twenty five bucks

for the boat and then someone rubbed you. Then you're stucks.

and do some informal work. I saw one guy who was cutting hair for a dollar time, but I couldn't really get a satisfactory response to what they're expected to do. If they don't have the money and can't get someone to send us seventy five dollars, they'd need to cover their travel costs and the twenty five percent transfer.

idea is to move forward to get further ahead. We brought our children to look for a future, not to be locked up here in Panama. As if we've been in prisoned.

by the bus. And then the next bus is people seem to be kind of rushing to get to them. They're rushing to my food. I could see the sky has like an entire carrier bag full of pink wave for biscuits and coke bottles. That that's going to be his food for the next eleven hours. I guess other guys to see with bags of bread, rolls and stuff, and they're the first people are getting on the bus. Now, these buses aren't entirely safe. In twenty twenty three, forty

two people died in a bus crash. This year, seventeen were intured in a crash in August. Now, migration offices ride in each bus with the migrants to check on safety protocols and make sure they don't get off anywhere else in the country, just like everywhere else on their journey. People make money off the migrants in last blankets. A bus costs sixty dollars ahead and has fifty five passages three three hundred dollars a bus. More than a dozen

buses leave every day. They even half of the thousand or so people who arrived us a transfer service to get their bus fare. That's five hundred dollars in transfer fees alone. Of course, not everyone in the community is making thousands of dollars off the migrants. I interviewed local shopkeeper who still sits just outside the camp gates, and I asked him to explain his stock, which included the oddly popular I backed the blue thin blue Lion T shirt.

So I've seen several people across the daddy and gap it.

can buy. There are certain people who buy, of course, if everyone bought, but there are very few who can buy something to leave here. Almost seventy percent leave dirty because they don't have anywhere to get money, and the little they can get often comes from selling their phones, their watch, a cap, or their sneakers to be able to get money to pay for their fare to keep going.

very low. However, the immigrant is there and he's picking fruit, going to the fruit trees, going to the vegetable fields, going to the garbage dumps, going picking up things that many Americans who live there don't do, of course, and so they need them to say that they don't go. They need the support of the immigrant people to have the balance that they have today.

pretty challenging a lot of ways. I find I'm oddly comfortable amidst the chale and trauma of a refugee camp. It's a familiar environment for me, and I know how to conduct myself. I feel safe with the migrants, and I tend to find them very open and welcoming to me. I can talk to anyone and they can talk to me. I bring toys for children and try to bring resources for adults, and sometimes I bring my harmonica if I

being really cliche in a weird way. Refue camps are a little safe space for me, and even though I know it's bad, I can console myself that I'm helping a little or at least giving people some hope and some information. That made me feel a bit better. But in the city I found it hard, knowing that people were in a terrible situation and that nobody here seemed

to care. I went for a run in the jungle near the city, trying to get some perspective and clear my head, but I just ended up screaming and the inconsiderate driver I was angry at them for nearly hitting me. That I was just angry at everyone all over the US and even here in Panama City, for their indifference. It's so much human suffering, the lack of concern about migrants in Panama City. What is so next? At last, blancs even more surprising an announcement of the loudspeakers called

several Colombian passport holders to the migration office. At first, it seemed like they were just going to a little wooden shed with a couple of CENA Front officers in it to return their documents. I'd already noticed that some migrants, and seemingly most of the African migrants, were being called to a different shed to do biometric scans. I wondered if this was part of the same process. But shortly thereafter, a truck rolled up and several of the Colombians were

loaded in. Apparently neither they nor their partners knew what was going on. They're taking some of the Columbian guys away to report them. You can hear a little kid crying for his dad. Okay this, then they've taken his brother and his brother's wife, taken some other his husband, some of the little kid's dads and making them sit on the floor. I don't know why. Yeah, I don't know what they're.

this really sucks. Now they're taking the deportation bus. There's men crying because their wives are on their women crying, their husbands are on their kids are crying because their parents are on there, and they've just done this crossing and now they're going to send them back. By the time I got back to the city, I was getting texts from migrants with photos of them and handcuffs. More and more of them were being deported, particularly the Colombians.

One of them, texting me after being returned to Columbia on a flight, gave the following account of detention.

or a chance to appeal their deportation. Instead, they were detained for eight days, spent their last US dollars, and were then kicked out of the country. They were not detained or arrested upon reaching Columbia, which makes it a little more difficult for me to believe the claim that only people without standing warrants in Columbia were being deported.

These weren't the only allegations of mistreatment I heard. Magrants came to me and whispered about the abuse of black migrants who were forced to walk to Lahas Blancos because they couldn't afford the boat ride. I should note that it wasn't the migrants who had been robbed or abuse that came to me. It was other migrants. It was a group of guys had given a water filter too.

While they were leaving to walk from Lahas Blancas, I hadn't been able to join them, but when they got there, we ran into each other again, and they came up to me to share their concerns for the black men who had walked with them. In one instance, one migrant told me he was robbed by what he called quote police dressed as thieves. The deportations, which seemed to be

increasingly commonplace, are being funded by US taxpayer dollars. The same day that Molino took office in July, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas, himself the child of migrants, visited Panama.

Panama's a relatively young country and one which the US occupied part of for much of the last century, but despite a real struggle for independence, the Panamanian government didn't seem concerned that the U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security was present at the inauguration of a president in a

country that is decidedly not the U. S. Homeland. The official DHS readout of his trip notes that the US has enjoyed a flourishing strategic relationship with Panama for over one hundred years, which is certainly one way to sell up decades of occupation, violence, and profit from the Panama Canal and one of the more brutal dictatorships in the long list of authoritarian regimes that the US preferred to

communist or even socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere. They also announced that the US government would quote help the Panamanian government to remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal basis to remain in Panama. Obviously act to take this moment to note that under the United Nations, refugee can vente and refugees do have a legal right to travel through a country on route to another. His Erica describing that right.

in Bahjojigito. Because Panama's government and Venezuela's government have ceased relations after the election, Panamara is now struggling to deport Venezuelan's back to Venezuela, and it's actively searching for a third country into which to deport them. But even if the program resulted one planeloaded day, which it hasn't yet, that would be roughly ten percent of the total dadly in traffic and far fewer planes are traveling. What it will do, like so many other DHS policies, is play

into the hands of smugglers. Already, new ocean roots are being used, which see migrants, many of whom cannot swim, taking lung journeys around Panama on ill equipped boats. This doesn't help anyone apart from the DHS contractors and staff, equipping and training Panamanian personnel, and the human traffickers making more and more money from migration. I also shopkeeper his opinion on this.

ahead and give well being to your children. Now, ten percent of those who go are going to destroy the good name of the migrants, But what people really want to do is help their family, and this balance unbalances everything that is being done by good people, because there are many good people who want to get ahead, and I think that the United States should support give support to people who really want to fight and move forward.

As I just told you, they give a lot of benefit they contribute to the country.

on the bus. From there, they crossed quickly into Nicaragua and Guatemala before arriving in the Mexican border city of Tapatula in the state of Chiapas and ironically not so very far from whether Zapatistas made their revolution thirty years ago. Once they crossed the southern border of Mexico, migrants can begin their application for asylum using the CBP one app that we've talked about so much on the show before.

They can use it in Tabasco and Chiapas, the southern border states, and then once again when they're north of Mexico City. To recap very briefly, the app is terrible and almost every way, including its inability to recognize blackfaces. It's limited functionality on Android phones, which are a vast majority of devices used by migrants, It's constant crashing, and an eight to nine month wait time for asylum appointments. His Erica explaining some of those problems.

at all. The goal of the app is to make it harder for people, even those with very legitimate asylum claims, to obtain asylum in the use. As we heard yesterday, the CHNV program is no better a recently Reddit thread of applicants who've been waiting nearly two years. What it didn't mention yesterday is a parallel program for another group of migrants, which I'll let Erica explain.

renewing for the other four countries. So it's really a very stark demonstration of how the US immigration system, even when.

that I'd booked. I have, however, a serious problem with a Biden administration which left people who fought alongside its own US troops to die in Afghanistan and turned away migrants small over the world, but then opened its arms to a country that just happened to have the majority of its citizens be the same race as the president. It's cruel and it's wrong, and it's barely ever even mentioned in national media coverage. But there's not fortunate enough

to be Ukrainian. Here's what waiting in Mexico looks like.

them have spent several thousand dollars. Once they're in Capatula, they're faced with the astronomical costs for the trip north, often several thousand dollars more, and many of them, their phones exhausted, have slept on the streets. Those who didn't speak Spanish struggled to find refuge. Those who did wanted to move quickly, but struggle to find the money. Here are the Iranian migrants you heard early in the series, explaining what they'd already heard about CBP one.

place where they have a CVP one appointment. Migrets absolutely have been robbed or kidnapped on their way to their appointment and missed it as a result, but they are just as honorable in the eight or nine months that they have to wait for one. Margarets and Tapajula are at a very high risk for kidnapping and are often held until their families pay ransoms. But without money or

an appointment, their little means of leaving the city. Some choose to travel a little further north and then hop on a freight train known as Labstia the Beast, an extraordinarily risky endeavor that several of the people I spoke to for this series have undertaken. The only place to ride on these trains is on top of carriages, exposing migrants to freezing temperatures in the desert night. Even on

the train, they're not safe from kidnapping. Like many migrants, the Ranian group will well informed about domestic politics in the US, and they say when they made their journey north, they wanted to be sure to avoid the state where local law enforcement was likely to turn them over for deportation. In reality, that could be any of the states, but they're probably right that their life would be a little easier on the West coast.

five hundred. In fact, this is the continuation of extremely punitive and cruel politics that have been in place since he was finally forced to stop using Title forty two, which, if you're not aware, is a public health law used by the Trump administration and embraced by the Biden administration

as an asylum law. It has already resulted in the deportation to people back to places where they have extremely credible fears of harm and created a system whereby migrants have no idea how they will be treated on any given day. Again, it's play into the hands of anyone seeking to smoke or migrants into the country and detected, while also harming innocent people coming to this country to ask for protection. His Erica's short history of Biden's asylum policy since last year.

There's been a few kind of alternative programs run by shelters or local governments, where people with extreme medical vulnerabilities, for example, can be let in without an appointment, but we don't know whether the ban applies to them once they enter without that appointment, right, So it's like I said, inconsistently applied exceptions. If you enter between a port of entry, you're presumed and eligible for asylum again unless you meet some therew except and what that means is you can still.

but it's a high hurdle. But the most important thing is those two types of protection are not path to citizenship, and they do not allow you to petition for your family. So, for example, if you get asylum in the US and then you want to ask for your wife and children to join you, there is an avenue for that, and all of you can eventually become citizens. Withholding of removal and convention against torture, you basically get a work permit.

what you can do to support them. When the state worked, just you.

not really an easy thing. It's not something that if we are fine tomorrow, can advise any of our family members to go through, because it's so deaf. It's risky if your family member is in there and it's not out. It takes the grace of God for you to even lie on your bed and close all your eyes either.

avoid being swept downstream. Not everyone can help. Just surviving the Dadian takes all of what many people have. But for the people who are in a position to even in desperate times, there's mutual support among the migrants. Very few people who.

to help another. So we don't really condemn them, but at least we are praying where we are bleeding on our brothers worst still behind that if they meet people, if they have the ability to herpe, they should do so. Of course, it's not really uneasy something.

are looking out for one another. Kids don't stop playing the moment they become refugees, not an adults stop laughing. In fact, these things become even more important that how we keep our humanity in a system that's inherently dehumanizing, And people don't stop organizing or caring about one another either. It's not just the migrants, of course. One of the families who've been stuck in Bao Jiguito for almost a month was given some money by a local Sender Front

member to take a bus. In Mexico, those who don't have enough money to take buses, we'll hop onto freight trains, and as they speed through towns and rail yards at night, local people will throw plastic bags of food, water, and clothing to them. In Panama City, I visited a Jesuit run shelter for migrants called fate Erga.

he's right. I think that as we try and help on a difficult journey, we must always keep in mind. He might come from a very different background than my mutual Aid group, but we do seem to share the same belief in solidarity with the migrants.

welcome migrants and refugees. So they fundamentally reject it. So they invent all these narratives that Haitians practice voodoo and they eat pets, and this and that or that and it's shameful mean, or like the Venezuelans, that the majority of them are from Triandegua gang or that they come from areas that are what you call problematic or chauvannista, and that they are infuriating or that or that. All the same narrative that was created when when the Maritos

left Cuba. And it's not that the Cuban government is sending all the prisoners on the Madi l boats to invade the United States. It's the same narrative.

continue to pass through, and people continue to die. So as you say this, this is going to continue, maybe not a half a million people, but the flow is going to continue.

a situation where are not seen so positively. And consequently, last week we had a meeting perhaps on National Reality, and we touched on on the subject of immigrants, and the first reaction was, no, it's not the state that pays the fare of the migrants.

faith by helping others. My early experienced religion came in high school from a priest who was a teacher who'd been part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa. I'm not a religious person in myself, but I can understand how seeing God and other people is not that far from my own politics. Lifit seeing God and know other people that impels people stand up against apartheid or to dedicate their lives to helping migrants, then I respect that.

So after we come back, I want to try and answer the question that pytheay Alias are ask what can you do? Huge humor on us at the prop of the hill we ran into them. Yeah. After getting back from the Dad end and hearing the migrants share their struggles as they waited in Mexico for an outlest designs to lay and discourage them, I really struggled to come to terms with everything I'd seen and was hearing a bit to plenty of dangerous places I've seen war, state violence,

and terrorism. I know the tragedy of death and violence, but the slow, deliberate suffering inflicted on migrants for people who lied to us every day on television is particularly hard to bear for me. As I mentioned at the start of this series, I think the grim reality of our migration system. On my first day in Bahajiqito, little girl's head hanging limply from a makeshift stretcher a strangers carried her into town. It's also cruel, so deliberate, and

so unnecessary, and it felt so disempowering. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. It doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.

To get water out here, we have to walk. And if you out of water or injure yourself so you can't walk out of here, it's possible you'll die, just like the migaants do in the jungle. People get robbed here, just like in the dad Enn And if it wasn't for the five of us with our backpacks full of water, people could die of thirst here just like they do in the jungle. I thought I was packing water bottles into my frame pack. I thought about little kids I've

met in Baho Chiquito. This isn't the place for children either, but over the last eighteen months, I've met hundreds of them out here. I've given them my jackets and hats, warmed up milk for babies in my camping stove, and even wrapped the little girl up in a milar blanket with me to warm her up last year. Just like

the Dadienne. The suffering here is out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, And in a year where we're constantly being told democracies under threat, I think a bear is mentioning that migrants are treated as humans without rights even when they're inside this country, and that their lives are seen as dispensable so long as whoever is in office can look quote tough on migration and

make TV pundits and big money don't as happy. There weren't any TV pundits or big money doon is on our water drop, just a few of us everyday people. Some people come out here because their family members across the desert. Some come out because everyone who crosses a desert is part of our family. Like Bonnio said, in all humans are brothers, and none of us want our brothers or sisters to die in their mountains, whatever their passport might say. And so nearly every weekend, people all

along the border load up heavy bags for supplies. On this drop. Each of us filled our packs with water, cans of tuna, pineapple soup, some warm clothing, and in this case an audio recorder recording recording in progress. Rhyme, of course, just gave me an opportunity to discuss my life's calling. Ensuring the correct fit of backpack harness systems.

It just doesn't wrap the straps. You'd either have to drop the waistbelt or like these have adjustable frames, so you can make them fit with those of the days. For that, that's really pretty with everyone suitably adjusted and ergonomically optimized. We twisted on the audio record as I had attached the straps of our packs and set off.

they're here really pissed me off. A year later, with bags full of water, JMS and I spoke about things and how they got so much worse in the last two years, but press coverage and more Importantly, donations have been way lower. It's same story up and down the border, record deaths, newer and harder migration routes, different migration patterns, and the people who cried outside ice detention centers in

Trump's first term cheering for more walls and bigger DHS budgets. Meanwhile, unlike the Trump era, we don't have the support of thousands of liberal people in California's big cities. After the Democrats cynically use migrant suffering in their twenty twenty campaign, they abandoned them upon acquiring power, and their supporters have mostly followed them. So that left five of us this particular morning to load up bags and do the life

saving work of dropping water. On top of all the state violence, there's been more and more interference with the water drops, and as we got further into our route, we made the increasingly common discovery that someone had taken it up on themselves to destroy our supplies. S man of ice, sick. That's probably though. These are slash slash.

if you're not familiar, this wasn't true. Belugan now works. It's a quote I'm quote Border reporter for Fox News, Danny, good morning to you.

here to work. They are going to Atlanta and Minneapolis to see if we can talk to some of them real quick. Old espanon the so Ecuadora, don't US and New York going to New York.

joins me now to dig into this trend. So, Julia, first, just give us some perspective here. How is Customs and Border Protection operating right now? And what are your sources saying about this historic rise in migrants at the border.

to sleep because they were so overcrowded. Now, because of the technology, they're actually able to not even hold people past seventy two hours and very quickly release them. But the tragedy comes after that. There are a lot of migrants who are being released on the streets without being taken to nonprofits, and some of them don't exactly know where they're supposed to go, even though CBP does try

to coordinate with the cities where they are released. That's definitely happening in the Tucson, Arizona area and Eagle Pass, Texas. Even though they are scrambling as fast as they can to release migrants, that are still thousands who remain in the field, a lot of them crowded under a bridge an Eagle Pass, just waiting for CBP to take them in. The reason a lot of people can give you different reasons. One, perhaps Mexico is interdicting as many migrants as they were

earlier in the year. They're now lower on funds because of these record highs. Another reason sometimes migrants will say that they're worried about a future Republican administration or a future Trump administration that might be harder ANDed, so they think now is the time to come.

hours or three days. The Department of Homeland Security office who inspected general report published in November twenty twenty three, a month before the new segment that you just heard, said that fifty six percent of people were held for longer than that, for some people being held for more than a month. This information is publicly available and even had a press release. I found it very quickly and

I reported on at the time. But NBC chowse not to seeing migrants as a quote homeland security issue, not as people. It's fundamentally the problem and the way we fix that is showing up as people to help. Despite the massive media focus on the border in the last year, I very rarely see other journalists actually at the border. To give him credit. Malgan does sometimes show up, but he doesn't stay long, and he doesn't really have the capacity to interview migrants, even if you wanted to. The

border is vast and mostly empty. It's a place I've come to know and come to love in my time dropping water and recreating and doing other mutilaid projects out here. Now they have a better understanding of the journeys people go through to get here, even more determined to make this small part of their trip less dangerous. And besides, I get to see cool rocks. Oh say, with mister potato here, it looks like he's dying off.

to leave Tapatula after having all their money stolen. I wanted which, if any of these fates had before been Miami, and if she was still having a pepper pig adventure. Sadly between where I met her or where I found them, Mini mouse Doll, There's nothing else I can do. They're here in the mountains outside San Diego, where the wind blows so strong sometimes you can barely stand up. I can do something without the ability to do something, something which I know is meaningful. I don't know how I'd

managed to stay on this beat. It's just too heartbreaking to meet good people, share meals and laughter, in deep conversations with them, and then see them fed into a teeth of a machine that robs, brutalizes, and kills them. So that Joe Biden can stand on a podium and say that border crossing to down this month they are down,

and that's allowedly due to enforcement in Mexico. But I want to make sure that everyone who does cross the border can do so safely and they don't have to die on US soil after fighting so hard to make it here. This hasn't been the case for everyone this year. My friends up and down the border have carried far too many little memorial crosses into the mountains. And depending on the election results next week, what we're doing might

be illegal soon, but that'll never make it wrong. Since early September, nine people have died in a little part of southern California alone. My friends who searched for them sometimes found their remains and undertaken the thankless task of sharing the bad news with their families, then constructive memorials in their memory. This is just one of the many dangerous parts of the migration route north, but it's the

one that I can help with. If you're nearby are visiting for a while, there are several organizations dropping water on the border. Border Angels, Border Kindness and Borderlands Relief Collective here in San Diego, Arho, Samaritans, noms Perthes in Arizona. Groups you search and rescue as well. Obviously, not everyone lives here at the USA is Southern border, but more than half of the population does live within one hundred

miles of a border. Even if you don't live in the USA, or maybe you do but you don't live anywhere near the border, I guarantee there are migrants in your community. In the last year, I've worked with migrant welcome committees in Maryland, church groups in the rural south, Sikhs on the West Coast, occurred on the East Coast, to name just a few. Without a type of fanfare, people all over this country are making space their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them, housing them, and

helping them get set up in a new place. For the most part, it doesn't get coverage you a democratic administration. It doesn't get much public support either, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Aside from all the reasons it's important, dropping water on the border is also fun for me. It's helped me learn more about where I live. I appreciate the desert and make new friends who generally share my outlook on the world. I love being outdoors, and

I'd be outdoors anyway, but it's way. My hiker is about much more than myself. Yeah yeah.

that might direct them to resources along their route. Last Sunday night, as I was absent by and least thumbing through a shotgun reloading manual in my living room as I love to do, my phone started buzzing. It's done this so many times in the last months. Mostly it's a photo of someone I met updating me on their journey, or one of the little wooden animals that they give to children, which has made its way to Mexico and

hopefully giving them some comfort along the way. Often it's less positive news someone's been robbed or simply run out of money and they need help. But I got two messages this Sunday which lifted my spirits. No Emi, the Little Girl who had an adventure like Pepper Pig in the jungle. Why did you know how it's And she sent me a photo of the tiny stone bear that I'd given her. She also wanted to know if we could still go to see Minnie Moles, who she came

to America, which I assured her we could. I think it would be quite apt to visit a place which builds itself as the happiest place on Earth, where someone I met in one of the most desperate parts of the planet. The second message was from one of the migrants i'd met in the jungle, telling me she'd made it to America, not just to America, but to a part of the border where I've been dropping water with my friends. Just a few weeks before I left for Panama, she sent me a photo of a rock with a

message on it one way, which I'm very familiar. She told me about her walk, one which I've made myself, and she taught me how hard it was. I said, I knew, but really I don't know, because I wasn't carrying months of trauma with me on the mountain. She's the only person out of one hundred son I met who's made it here. Most of them are in Mexico now, and most of them will remain there or maybe get sent back home, or maybe they'll make a desperate attempt

across this week. As you hear this before the election, it made me so happy to see someone safely here, one person out of hundreds. For so many of the migrants I met, America was a dream, and the journey with a nightmare. Since the series began airing, I've seen videos of people I care about clinging to freight trains that bruce bodies after being beaten. I've helped them find healthcare after they were sexually assaulted, and tried to find

room at overcrowded shelters. I've helped trans ladies navigate all of this and transphobia and misogyny, and tried to find resources in French and English and Portuguese for non Spanish speakers. I'd hope that I'd finished this series with a single good story, a story of someone who made it, who's living the American dream that people died for in the jungle. But I can't, because even the people who made it

here are here temporarily. I'm broadcasting anything about their journey would put them at risk whoever wins the election next week. So instead I want to end with how you can make a difference, and I'll start with a story and how little things can make big differences. One day in Baljuquito, of sitting around with a few Venezuelan kids, probably four to eight years old, ripping pages out of my right

in the rain note book to make paper aeroplanes. Before I interviewed their parents, I asked him about the jungle. They said it was scary and they had nightmares. Now, I often find kids in these places get scared of the dark, and I used to bring these crappy little electric lights for them, but they're bulky and they're not very good. Recently, I've been carrying the little packets of fishing glow sticks instead. They gasped about ten bucks for

maybe one hundred of the little green lights. So I poured out my glove sticks, cut my hands and snapped one. The children amaze of the little glowing road. So I gave them the rest of the packet. I told them they could keep them for any time they were scared of the dark. Nearly a month later, I sometimes get a message on my phone with a photo of a

little tiny glow stick on a note of thanks. One thing that Father Elia said that really impacted me is that when he meets migrants, he asked what he sees of God in them, and his work for them is where he finds what there is of God and himself. Think. I've struggled so much with this serious impart because I've seen so much of the best of other people, indeed the best of myself, into such hard places. I always struggle a little to readjust after trips like this, but

this one's been particularly hard. In the jungle, I saw people helping, and in a sense, we were all in it together. When it rained, we all got wet, and when it got hot, we all huddled together in the shade. We shared bottles of water, We sat at the same tables and ate together. I can't really begin to experience a full, varily inexperience because I've been lucky enough never

to have anything that bad to run away from. Better, have experienced incredible solidarity and kindness for the people who went through it. I've also experienced the incredible indifference of people at home, and indeed of the states and governments of the world. The Colombian friends I met Las Blancas and Barjigito, who are handcuffed and deported and ripped from their families, have already invited me to come and stay in their homes in Colombia, but if their families make

it here, they won't encounter that kind of hospitality. Just last week, I helped to translate for a Venezuelan family living on the street in San Diego. Some of my friends do sponsor migrants, and that's something anyone can do if you're able to. It's an incredible thing you can do to change someone's life, and I can't encourage you enough to do so. I really do see the best of myself, of my friends, and of humanity, and I work to help migrants. I would say that on reflector.

And I wasn't really an anarchist until twenty eighteen, when I watched a state to the world abandoned thousands of migros in Tijuana and climbed a fence with my friends to take care of them, and specifically to distribute three huge backpacks full of waffles and another friend had sent from his waffle factory. I'd stopped believing in the benevolence of the state a long time before, but it wasn't really until then that I really understood the power of

people organizing horizontally to provide each other with dignity. Ever since then, I've drawn a lot of hope for humanity in the same place as I despare for people. Maybe that's why I keep going back. Since then, at the border, I've seen people die. I've held crying babies and crying parents. They've also shared meals with people from around the world, made friends for life, and learned curdish disco songs about

killing people. I've danced around campfires with Pep. But I couldn't imagined meeting when I first made my own journey here. Last Christmas, when i'd normally be at the bar with my friends, I stand the rock in the desert, eating a cold vegan m Marie with an Ecuadorian family and some of my friends. And all the Christmases I can remember, I never felt so much like I was in the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people.

But I think I see something that's just as special to me in the experience of mutual aid, and in a way it fulfills not only people's material needs but also our human desire for dignity and mutual respect. When I drop water at the border or carry someone's bags in the jungle, I see myself in them, and I

hope they see themselves a little bit of me. But right now, asylum system is so broken the very few people even make it far enough to drink the water I leave at the border, And despite the border featuring heavily in this year's election, there seems to be no national concern about the way our tax dollars brutalize people across the continent. So I want to end by asking you what you can do. It might be coming to unhere to drop water. It might be sending some money

to one of the links I include the description. It might be offering to translate for asylum seekers. It might just be talking to people and helping to change the narrative. You can vote or not next week, but there isn't a box you can take that will change the things I saw in the jungle. Trump wanted to deport millions more people. Harris wanted to pass a bill that will kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to someone whose box you take every four years. You have

to take them on for yourself. The way we change things is in a way we do things every day, every week. No one's every four years. I want to end with noise and have a message to the American people. I also want to ask if anyone of those how to get cheap tickets to Disneyland, because I have just looked that up and I cannot stress enough ho but I am to afford it.

future for our children. And I do not know what has happened, but we feel like living in a dictatorship. We are living something very unpleasant and we do not get any help. But those who help us, we want to say thank you. They opened that door for us. They've opened many doors for many Venezuelans, and well we hope in faith that they will open them for us.

touch as they've come north. I want to thank Border Kindness and Borderland Relief Collective who have both welcomed me on their drops, and it's not always easy to be around a journalist. It's not easy to let someone record everything you're doing out there and their inherent risks to that, and I really appreciate them trusting me. I want to thank dutch Ware Hammocks, who rush shipped to me a hammock when my old one tore right before I left.

And I think most of all, I want to thank all of you for listening, taking the time, and all the listeners who have reached out to say they're listening to the series, people who have reached out to ask how they can help. I would love to organize a way to help the people I've spoken to. I spoke to someone just this morning who's still stuck in Tapachula because she was robbed and her and her daughter are five hundred bucks short for the bus to ride north

to Tijuana. I don't have the capacity to organize that right now, but if someone else does, they should reach out to me, because I would really like to help these people who have become my friends and who I care about, and who are right now stuck in a very dangerous place because someone in Washington, d C. Has made a choice to treat them with cruelty and not kindness. So if that's you, if you're the person who could

to minister that, please let me know. Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed the series.