The United States is going to pay for flights and offer other help to Panama to remove migrants under an agreement signed Monday, as the Central American country’s new president has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darien Gap used by people traveling north to the United States.
The memorandum of understanding was signed during an official visit headed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to Panama for the inauguration Monday of José Raúl Mulino, the country’s new president.
The deal is “designed to jointly reduce the number of migrants being cruelly smuggled through the Darien, usually en route to the United States,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
The efforts to send some migrants back to their homelands “will help deter irregular migration in the region and at our southern border and halt the enrichment of malign smuggling networks that prey on vulnerable migrants,” she said.
“Irregular migration is a regional challenge that requires a regional response,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
Shortly after Mulino’s inauguration, the Panamanian government released a statement saying Mayorkas had signed an agreement with Panama’s Foreign Affairs Minister Javier Martínez-Acha in which the U.S. government committed to covering the cost of repatriation of migrants who enter Panama illegally through the Darien.
