Migrant rescues on San Andres Island expose the dangers of the migration route to the United States

Q24N (VozdeAmerica) BOGOTA – About eight migrants were rescued this week by the Colombian Navy after being abandoned by human traffickers on the small island of Cayo Pescador, near the San Andrés (a small Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua in the Caribbean area), an event that is not isolated and is part of a growing number of incidents that highlight the risks faced by people on this irregular migration route to the United States.

In 2023, approximately 500 migrants were found shipwrecked or adrift on the high seas due to strong waves caused by adverse weather conditions. So far in 2024, the Colombian Navy has rescued 224 migrants.

In addition, according to official data, 70 people are missing after leaving San Andrés on illegal boats bound for Central America.

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The well-known “VIP route”, as the Colombian Public Prosecution Service has called it, is seen by migrants as a “safer” route to the US border than the dangerous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.

This is the case of Dennis Paredes, a Venezuelan migrant who lived in Peru and took this route in the hope of reaching the US. However, Paredes never reached his destination. The illegal boat he was traveling on disappeared in the waters of San Andrés in October 2023.

A “man charged my husband $2,600 from Colombia to the US. The route he offered my husband was the San Andrés route, which was supposedly a safe and fast route, because he told him he would be in Nicaragua in three hours, and from there the entire trip would be overland,” Nelly Durán, Dennis Paredes’ wife told the Voz de America.

Since then, Durán, together with 70 other families of people missing in these waters, started the search for their loved ones, for which they founded the NGO Milve or International Committee of Relatives and Friends of Missing Venezuelan Migrants.

Lieutenant Jhonny de Jesús Saltarín told VOA that despite the risks of sudden changes in the waves due to weather conditions, people continue to choose this route and risk their boats disappearing at sea.

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“The dynamics of irregular migration continue, especially due to the situation in Panama. Boats with more than 30 people no longer sail out, as in previous years; now they travel in smaller groups of ten to eight people,” said Saltarín, chief of operations at the San Andrés Coast Guard Station.

In this context, the Missing Migrants Program of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) points out that, in addition to the natural conditions that cause shipwrecks and disappearances, many of these are the responsibility of human traffickers.

Nelly Durán blames these mafias for her husband’s disappearance. “We joined the families of other boats and there we realized that this is a modus operandi: in San Andrés the coyotes and the guides choose which boat passes and which does not,” she said.

The IOM adds that it has documented 105 reports of disappearances on the route from San Andrés to Nicaragua, many of which are believed to have been forced disappearances by illegal human trafficking groups.

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In this context, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on Wednesday that he had agreed with his Panamanian counterpart, José Raúl Mulino, to “evaluate” a legal route to regulate the passage of migrants through the Darien Gap, to prevent them into the hands of mafia networks and human traffickers in that region of the continent.

“They want to build a single legal route, controlled by the two governments, that provides incentives for those who want to cross the border to choose that route and not fall into the hands of the mafia. I think it is an idea that we can continue to develop,” said the Colombian president.

For her part, expert on international migration and director of the Human Rights Research Group of the University of Rosario, María Teresa Palacios, warned that the risks faced by migrants on these routes “will persist” because “the structural conditions of inequality, lack of opportunities and access to rights for migrants from Latin American countries have not disappeared.”

“Let us not forget that most of our countries have patterns of inequality in economic growth and employment integration, which pushes people to pursue a better future,” Palacios concluded.

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