Over the course of five reporting trips to the border since the beginning of the Biden administration, I have spoken to dozens of migrants from around the world — but the largest number have been, by far, from Venezuela. The country is facing an economic and political crisis in addition to rising levels of crime, which has prompted millions of its citizens to flee.
Last year, for example, I met a group of young people who described their journey north through the Darien Gap, an inhospitable, lawless jungle dividing Colombia from Panama.
Their experiences are typical of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have come to the United States in recent years.
One of them, a 30-year-old named Carlos, told me: “I felt as if everything in that forest could kill you.” “If you get sick or get bitten by something, that's it. You're dead and you'll just lie there forever.”
Another Venezuelan – who asked me not to use his name – described running into armed men carrying machetes and rifles while in a particularly hostile area of the jungle on the Colombian side of the border.
When he arrived in Panama, he had a surprise: he discovered that his wife, who was traveling with him, was two months pregnant. “It makes me really happy,” he said. “But it made me very nervous the rest of the trip to the border.”
