GOP Rep. Gimenez shows migrant traffic moving through Panama, heading to US border https://ift.tt/nVoFR67

EXCLUSIVE: Video taken by a top member of the House Homeland Security Committee shows how migrants are moving to the U.S.-Mexico border through Panama, with between 1,500-2,000 mostly Venezuelans moving through one village each day as they hope to enter the U.S.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., is currently on a congressional delegation surveilling U.S. operations in Panama and Colombia and took video, provided to Fox News Digital, showing how migrants emerge from the jungle in the Darien Gap – a key migrant crossing area for those seeking to move north – into a Panamanian village.

From there they are transported to another site, before being registered and leaving Panama to head to the U.S.

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Gimenez, a Cuban-born member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security and Armed Services Committees, said officials were encountering 1,500-2,000 a day in that village.

"People are coming out of the jungle into this village, overflooding this village, and then they move on their way. They're coming to the United States because the door is open and that's why we're here," he added.

He later showed a stop-off aid center that is run with help from the U.N., U.S. and Panama, which he said was better organized than the village.

"This is a stop-off before they continue their journey to the north, and finally when they get to the border with Costa Rica, they are released and they make their way up through Costa Rica, Central America and then into the United States," he said.

The footage comes amid concerns that a sharp drop in the record high migrant encounters at the southern border that followed the end of Title 42 on May 11 may not be sustainable and an increase in traffic could be around the corner, particularly during the typically busy summer months.

The Biden administration has implemented several measures that it believes are working to slow the record numbers seen in 2021, 2022 and early 2023, and has linked a 70% drop in encounters to those policies. They include an asylum rule that bars migrants from claiming asylum if they have entered illegally and crossed through other countries but failed to claim asylum there.

It has also expanded legal asylum pathways, including allowing over 1,400 migrants a day in via the CBP One app, while also flying up to 30,000 migrants a month in from certain countries, including Venezuela. It has also set up regional processing centers across Central America. 

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In April, the U.S. announced with Panama and Colombia a campaign to halt illegal immigration through the Darien Gap, including investments to reduce poverty and end the "illicit movement of people and goods" through the area. 

Republicans have accused the Biden administration of encouraging the flow of migrants to the U.S. border by expanding the use of "catch-and-release," reducing interior enforcement and rolling back Trump-era policies like border wall construction and the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) – which kept migrants in Mexico as they had their asylum cases heard.

Meanwhile, a number of Republican states have sued over both the asylum rule and also a pre-Title 42 policy, which saw migrants released into the U.S. without court dates due to overcrowding.

Gimenez said the migrants he encountered were intending to keep going until they get to the U.S.

"Everyone I've spoken to here wants to go to the United States, and about 95% of the people behind me are coming from Venezuela, so it's a pretty bad situation," he said. 

Fox News' Matteo Cina contributed to this report.