See Bensman X Videos from the trail
CIS analyst Todd Bensman completed field research August 6-18, 2024 about the Darien Gap immigration passageway through which more than 1.5 million foreign nationals have reached the U.S. southern border over the past three-plus years. At the link above, you can find X Tweets Bensman posted of video and photos from the ground. Here you can also find Bensman’s published reports. Bensman’s purpose for traveling first to Colombia’s immigrant staging towns and then to Panama’s camps and impacted villages was to assess the impacts of a new Panama plan to “close” the passageway – supposedly with pledged U.S. help. For background, read Bensman’s most recently published analyses on these potentially consequential new developments for the U.S. mass migration crisis now in its fourth year and its impact on the presidential election: Panama’s Pinch Point: Closing the gap would be a big step toward stopping the flow of migrants north. and A Dramatic Biden U-Turn on Darien Gap Immigrant Passage Policy
The Analytical Assessment: Has Panama Closed the Notorious ‘Darien Gap’ Mass Migration Route to the U.S. Border?
An initial assessment from the field in Colombia and Panama
The purpose of this report is to assess early progress of President Mulino’s highly consequential closure initiative, to chart its direction, provide a medium-term prognosis, and identify challenges to achieving Panamanian goals that might improve current U.S. border security and immigration-control management. This report is based on first-hand field research conducted from August 6-18, 2024, on both sides of the Darien Gap, which in Colombia encompasses migration trail entry points around the Gulf of Uraba and in Panama trail exits in Darien Province and Embera tribal reservation lands. This report is based on direct observation and interviews with migrants, residents, United Nations officials, smugglers, non-governmental organization personnel, area residents, and top Panamanian officials.
From a recorded English-language discussion between Director General Gobea and CIS analyst Todd Bensman on August 13, 2024, at SENAFRONT headquarters in Panama City. The interview focused on newly seated Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino’s vow to “close” the Darien Gap migrant trail immediately, in a plan reliant on American funding for large-scale repatriation flights. The plan also is heavily dependent on other enforcement measures requiring a diplomatic push for neighboring transit countries to similarly crack down. At this point in time, SENAFRONT had closed trails, renewed action against human smugglers associated with Colombia’s Clan del Golfo, on land and at sea, and is considering entry rules designed to deter migrants from leaving home.
Dispatch from Colombia: South American ally permits mass migration; Biden/Harris look away
Perhaps my most important finding was that there was no evidence of Colombian interdiction in the smooth-running Gaitanista human smuggling machine. Instead, I discovered a wide-open marriage between the Gaitanistas and local, state, and federal Colombian government agencies, the United Nations, and non-governmental migrant help groups, altogether engaged in the most productive, functionally well-oiled, and industrialized human smuggling assembly line operation anywhere on the planet.
Colombia Chaos: In the thick of the notorious Darien Gap migrant trails -Acandi
Bensman reports from one of many small springboard towns into the Darien Gap. Reporting based on Bensman’s August 6-18 reporting in Colombia and Panama
Exclusive Interview: Panama Border Security Chief Says Many U.S.-Bound Terror Suspects Caught in Darien Gap Region
The bad news: The migrant flood prompted by Biden-Harris policies means only a tiny fraction can be checked
PANAMA CITY, Panama — In April 2022, the American public finally heard the sound of national security alarms about the U.S. southern border, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection began publishing, on a monthly basis, the numbers of FBI watch-listed terrorists caught illegally crossing (a record-breaking 378 from FY2021 through July 2024). But what most Americans do not know is that many more terrorism suspects en route to the U.S. border could be added to that alarming number, except these ones were caught in Panama coming out of the notorious Darien Gap jungle, pulled off the migrant trails, and never accounted for in CBP’s public data reports. New official information about these additional terrorism suspects interrupted on their way to the American border comes by way of an exclusive Center for Immigration Studies interview with the chief of Panama’s National Border Service (SENAFRONT), Director General Jorge Gabea, at agency headquarters just off the Panama Canal. Asked to comment about SENAFRONT’s reported August arrest of three Afghan terror suspects whose biometrics were taken and checked at a Darien Province immigrant reception station (described in the SENAFRONT tweet below), Gabea responded that the report was “not fake. We did take and profile a few members of a terrorist cell from … Afghanistan,” he said. “We linked and we profiled them to be members of an active cell. They were members of a Salafist group, and they had links with different activities.” But then Gabea added that this was far from a one-off. “We have many stories of that. We don’t just have one. We have many stories of that, from Somalia, from Yemen … from Syria, from Africa.”
VIDEO: A Ride on Panama’s Wild Side
While reporting on Colombia-Panama’s notorious “Daien Gap” in August, Todd Bensman traveled by motorized paranga boat up a river for three hours to see a village hub for mass migration exiting the notorious Darien Gap. This is his view of the trip. Subscribe to Bensman’s Youtube channel.
NY Post: Five Chiefs of Forsaken Tribe in Panama’s Notorious ‘Darien Gap’ Migrant Passage Slam Biden/Harris, UN, and Immigrant Advocates ‘You are Finishing Us!’
Published Aug. 26, 2024 METETI, Panama — Not far from this small town, the 19,000-mile-long Pan-American Highway ends at a wall of jungle — the Darien Gap, a notorious wilderness that stretches from Colombia into Panama.In just three years, 1.5 million migrants — lured by the Biden-Harris administration’s open border — have braved the footpaths of this jungle on their way north. Rather that stop this dangerous flow, the White House has encouraged it. Top cabinet officials such as DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken have repeatedly come to Panama to press for “safe, orderly, and humane” transit for migrants. The Biden-Harris administration lavished millions in tax money on United Nations agencies and non-governmental advocacy groups (NGOs) that descended on this region to ease the burdens of Darien Gap travel. In the process, they have trampled arguably the most vulnerable and important stakeholder of them all in Panama: the Embera-Wounnaan tribe, whose 19,000 people happened to be living smack in the middle of this immigration hurricane.
SEE ALSO FOX NEWS DIGITAL STORY: Says Expert [Bensman]: Biden-Harris border policies wreak havoc on indigenous tribe, ‘Pushed aside and destroyed’ and Bensman interview on the WAR ROOM Indigenous Chiefs Blame Democrat Border Policies for Cultural Devastation-Bensman’s Scandalous WarRoom Report
The Daily Wire: Biden-Harris Mass Migration Is ‘Killing All The Indians in Panama’
METETI, Panama – The 19,000-strong indigenous Embera-Wounaan tribe resides far beyond the reach of American pollsters who regularly log high voter disapproval of the three-plus years of illegal mass migration over the U.S. Southwest Border.
But if anyone ever sought Embera opinion about distant U.S. border policy – and, almost incredibly, I may be the only one who ever has – they’d get an ear full.
VIDEO: A United Nations of Mass Migration
Encounters with a multinational diversity of immigrants crossing the Colombia-Panama Darien Gap, August 2024 Todd Bensman for the Center for Immigration Studies
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New York Post:Dems Abandon Wide-Open Gap
PANAMA CITY — On July 1, Panama’s new President José Raúl Mulino took office on an unprecedented promise to close a major route of illegal immigration — through which at least 1.5 million foreign nationals have poured through since 2021. Mulino said he would close the infamous Darién Gap, a 70-mile roadless jungle wilderness that South American migrants traverse on their way north to the United States. He secured a promise from the Biden-Harris administration to help accomplish this: money and possibly even planes to carry illegally arriving migrants back to their countries.But nearly two months after the US pledged a “removal flights program” to support Panama, the aid is nowhere to be found and the immigrants, after sheltering in place at home or in Colombia to see if Panama might actually deport people, are starting to flow once again through the Darién Gap.
VIDEO: What Mass Migration Looks Like in Slow Motion – from the Darien Gap
Piranga boats ferry U.S.-bound migrants out of the Darien Gap by the thousands. Subscribe to Bensman’s YouTube channel
VIDEO: How Panama Processes US-Bound Illegal Immigrants in Remote Jungle Embera Indian Village
The Embera native village of Bajo Chiquito has become a major transit hub for illegal immigrants moving from Darien Gap to Panamanian-arranged buses. Subscribe to Bensman’s Youtube channel
BENSMAN IN THE NEWS, DARIEN GAP
In War Room from Panama’s National Assembly: Democrats National Security Crisis: U.S. Fails to Seize Opportunity in Darien Gap Standoff
El Conservador Radio Show: Todd Bensman Reports on U.S. Failure to Help Panama Stop Illegal Immigration
Fox News Digital: Says Expert [Bensman] Biden-Harris border policies wreak havoc on indigenous tribe, ‘Pushed aside and destroyed’
Indigenous Chiefs Blame Democrat Border Policies for Cultural Devastation-Bensman’s Scandalous WarRoom Report
Spectator TV What Bensman Saw at The Darien Gap
On Charlie Kirk Show:how the White House Effed-Over Panama… and America on the Infamous Darien Gap Migration Trail
Two segments on Hillsdale College’s Radio Free Hour podcast talking about the Darien Gap
War Room: How The Panama Government Is Helping End Migrant Super-Highway Darien Gap
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