LOS CHILES — In the Darién jungle, Antonio and Ibrain saw a dog similar to the one they had left behind in Venezuela when they decided to migrate. When they recount this story, they both get emotional. It took them two and a half days to cross the jungle: first, they trekked the Colombian part; then, the Panamanian part.
The Darién Gap is one of the most dangerous points on the Central American migration route to the United States. “Nobody tells you what the jungle is really like. Even if they’ve been through it, nobody truly tells you what it is,” Ibrain says. “It’s when you reach the flag [marking the border with Panama] that the real jungle begins,” Antonio adds.
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They are seated around a table at Casa Esperanza, a shelter for migrants in Los Chiles, Costa Rica, on the Central American country’s northern border with Nicaragua. The Los Chiles area is “Taliban” territory — that is what they call the mafias operating there, picking up migrants like Antonio and Ibrain, who arrive from the south on government-contracted buses.
The Taliban pick up migrants at the Terminal, the bus station in this section of Alajuela province. Apparently, the town dubbed this organized group “The Taliban” because they seemed comparable to the terrorist group, but the origin of the name is unclear.
What is evident is that transporting migrants from the Terminal to a hotel for 1,000 colones (or about $2) is much more profitable than working in pineapple farming, one of the few employment options in the area. Many people in Los Chiles have set up their businesses around migration. People arrive there by bus directly from the south, from the Costa Rican city of Paso Canoas, where a yellow line painted on the ground marks the border with Panama and where they stop after crossing the Darién jungle.
A jungle crossing
The table is round, and sitting with Antonio and Ibrain are Victoria from Colombia; Lizeth from Ecuador; and Xiomara and Zaira, two sisters from Colombia. No one wants to give their surnames. They are all between 28 and 32 years old. Each has left someone behind. Lizeth, Xiomara and Zaira left their children, to whom they will send money.
They all want to reach the United States. “It took four days [to cross the jungle] because on the way we met a group that had seven children, so we helped them continue their journey, while they gave us food. To cross some rivers, we made a human chain so that the children could pass by holding onto our arms,” Zaira says.
A quick search on social media with the hashtag #Darien shows countless videos of migrants crossing the jungle. The first results usually have the most sensationalist titles, and the tabloid-style journalism muddles the possibility of finding any useful information.
Many people face this journey without proper clothing or footwear, without enough food. Agencies offer different types of packages to complete the journey. They offer trips as if it were tourism. “It’s continuous extortion,” says Victoria. “In the Colombian part, there are those who wear green shirts and accompany you to the flag. Then, if you want them to carry your equipment, for example, you have to pay more,” Antonio says.
The Darién Gap currently acts as a distant migration containment for the United States.
The green shirts he refers to probably belong to the Gulf Clan, one of Colombia’s main drug trafficking cartels that, according to Human Rights Watch, controls the migratory flow in the Darién Gap. A guide through the jungle to the flag costs about 0. Everything is purchasable and will make the journey more or less difficult: from crossing rivers by boat to getting food, tents or good footwear. If you have few resources, you’re on your own.
The ultimate goal for most people traveling through this border crossing is to reach the United States, but first they have to cross several Central American countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. The last stretch, once in North American territory, is Mexico.
While racist American discourse presents the Mexican border as the critical place to defend to safeguard the country from migration, the strategy of border externalization has caused the Darién Gap to currently act as a distant migration containment for the United States, making transit difficult for people who want to get there. It’s a first screening. Something similar to the Mediterranean as the first European border that distances the problem from the countries in the northern part of the continent.
In fact, Human Rights Watch says that neither the Central American governments nor the U.S. government are taking the necessary measures to guarantee safe and informed transit. This despite — or perhaps precisely because of — the great increase in migratory flow in recent years.
Disappearances and sexual violence
According to Panama’s National Migration Service, between January and February 2022, 8,964 people passed through the Darién, in 2023 it was 49,291, and in the same months of 2024, it has been 73,167. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2023, at least 1,275 people disappeared on their journey through the American continent — the number of disappearances in the Mediterranean for the same year, according to the IOM, is 3,155.
What is not clear is how many disappearances have occurred in the jungle, and the Panamanian and Colombian governments accuse each other of not keeping count. Panamanian authorities counted 124 bodies in the Darién jungle between January 2021 and April 2023, but the figure is likely much higher.
In the dense jungle, the terrain causes falls and injuries that make it difficult to continue. The lack of water forces people to drink from non-drinkable rivers, and armed gangs extort those in transit. Sexual violence is also prevalent, especially against women.
“All the women we’ve heard from say they’ve been groped.”
In 2024, Doctors Without Borders provided psychological care to about 5,000 people per month, mostly for sexual violence, and warned of an increase in brutal attacks in the jungle. After reporting this, Panama’s government suspended all of the NGO’s medical activities in the Darién, claiming the organization lacked a valid collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Health, an agreement they have been trying to renew since October 2023.
“All the women we’ve heard from say they’ve been groped. They insert their hands into the vagina to see if they have money. There are five groups operating in the Darién Gap. If they’re lucky, they might only encounter three. If they pass through all five, they’re groped by all five. But filing complaints means staying in Costa Rica, and they’re just passing through. Men aren’t inspected [genitally], only women,” explains a worker from one of the NGOs working with migrants in Costa Rica.
The worker prefers not to give her name or that of her organization because if she’s associated with this type of information in a quick Google search, she fears she won’t be able to enter Nicaragua if needed for a project. “It’s happened before,” she says. Additionally, if women become pregnant during transit, they arrive in Costa Rica, where voluntary abortion is illegal and the morning-after pill costs about .
Nicaragua next
Antonio, Ibrain, Victoria, Lizeth, Xiomara and Zaira. All six have etched in their memory the people they were able to help and those they couldn’t. Antonio and Ibrain remember a woman with a broken hip whose husband left her behind to seek help, and whom Ibrain and Antonio accompanied. Fortunately, people came to take her away on a stretcher. But they don’t know how she’s doing. Another broke her leg, and they haven’t seen her in any camp since.
The plan for all of them now is to continue through Nicaragua. There, they’ll have to pay 0 to the military to cross the border, a transit fee that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s regime doesn’t charge to Venezuelan or Haitian nationals, but does to all others.
Then, another are needed to take them to Santo Tomás del Norte, from where they can pass into Honduras. From there, they say Guatemala and Mexico are the most dangerous places. But for now, they’re catching their breath.
When they made it out of the jungle, Antonio and Ibrain saw a woman praying. One of them is a believer, the other isn’t, but both joined her, all three holding onto each other as if in catharsis.
“She prayed beautifully,” says Antonio. After chatting, they agree to take a photo together, with their backs turned so they’re not recognized, on the road. Ibrain’s T-shirt reads: “Good vibes only.”
Everyone benefits
“Here, the taxi drivers benefit, the hotel owners, the bus companies, Western Union, the innkeepers. Everyone benefits, everyone,” says Juana Morales, a former police officer who quit her job six months ago to help migrants.
She is part of the Humanitarian Network coordinated by the Jesuit Migrant Service (SJM) in Paso Canoas, Costa Rica — an organization that collaborates with the Basque NGO Alboan, supporting their projects to address the needs of people in transit, especially since the increase in migration in 2023.
The network is composed of people who began assisting migrants by offering them food and hygiene items when they camped, in unsanitary conditions, in this border city, newly arrived from Panama on government-chartered buses. There were up to 4,000 people camped in Paso Canoas, fueling racism in a town where a group called Defendamos la frontera (“We Defend the Border”) was created. Racism also grew in the rest of the country: people in the capital, San José, complained about seeing migrants on their streets.
“They had sheets and soaps, but they told us they wouldn’t give them to us if we didn’t pay.”
Since last year, the Costa Rican government has closed the migration circuit. Through an agreement with Panamanian authorities, they take people directly to Centro Temporal para Migrantes (CATEM), a temporary center for migrants 10 kilometers from Paso Canoas, on a bus that costs .
With a pavilion for about 300 people and capacity for as many outdoors, the camp is an old Faber-Castell factory that still retains some colorful wooden railings, imitating colored pencils.
“They’ve treated us like animals,” said a woman who had spent six days there. Inside CATEM, only three organizations are authorized to work: IOM, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and UNICEF. The SJM has requested permission to enter to continue the care work they were doing in the camp, but so far they haven’t received permission. They also have doubts, as entering could mean having to compromise with a system they disagree with.
Not free
CATEM is more or less a temporary center, depending on how much money you have. If you have the for the government-aided journey to the north of the country, you leave immediately by bus. If you don’t, you can work — some escape daily to do so in the town and pay for the ticket — or wait for the supposedly free bus, which doesn’t run daily.
But the group accompanying the mentioned woman explains that it’s not exactly like that. They’ve been there for six days, but they say it’s not true that the bus is free: they’ve had to work inside the center, cleaning or doing other tasks, to continue their journey.
“They had sheets and soaps, but they told us they wouldn’t give them to us if we didn’t pay. We had my sick mother, an elderly lady, and they told us they didn’t care,” recounts another woman in the group. They are also travelling with several children.
Inside CATEM, services are not only not free but more expensive, such as Western Union commissions for sending or receiving money, which cost more than 10%, according to those who have passed through the camp. On the route, everything is also more expensive than usual, and the jobs they can opt for are irregular and under poor conditions.
In palm harvesting, for example, the salary is a day for working from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. Another option is prostitution, as sex tourism, especially for American retirees, is in demand. Fifteen minutes can cost between and 0, depending on the type of sex worker.
“For a trip from Paso Canoas to Ciudad Neily that costs just , taxi drivers charge them ,” Juana Morales gives as an example.
“In Uvitas — where buses crossing the country make their first stop, and people often arrive without having eaten for two days — it’s clear there’s some agreement with the site owner because when the network proposed distributing food there, he only allowed us if we bought it from him,” says Lucy Nájera. Both Morales and Nájera are part of the SJM network.
A new form of slavery
The government ceded the migration monopoly — without a public vote — to two bus companies, which divided the country to avoid competition: Tracopa and Chilsaca. The first covers the southern route, from CATEM to Orotina, where, for example, a bottle of water costs 1,000 colones () compared to the usual 600 colones.
From there, passengers change to a Chilsaca bus that takes them to Los Chiles to cross into Nicaragua. It’s rumored that drivers often charge to those who can’t pay for a seat, and place them in the aisle, pocketing the money.
What appears to be a shady deal is, in reality, an agreement permitted by the government itself. On the control panel of a bus, an order from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport specifies: “Seated, 55. Standing, 10,” charging the rates stipulated by the public services regulatory authority.
Our calculation is that a person can spend about ,000 on the journey.
“Our calculation is that a person can spend about ,000 on the entire journey from Colombia, before Darién, to Ciudad Juárez [Mexico],” explains Roy Arias, SJM coordinator in Paso Canoas. “It’s a new form of slavery,” says Lidieth Velázquez, also from the network.
It’s easy to distinguish a Tracopa company bus carrying migrants from one that isn’t. Those on the migration route have open windows because they lack air conditioning. The seats are faded and worn. Company owner Raymond Salim Simaan Khachab is known for, among other things, having financed political parties in the country.
“We’re all in a park. It’s raining a lot, and there are many mosquitoes,” Antonio writes. He and Ibrain will continue the route the next day. Xiomara and Zaira, too, are on their own. Lizeth and Victoria will have to stay to get the 0 that the Nicaraguan government demands to cross their border. In the video he sends, they can be seen charging their phones on a light pole. “We’re going to spend the night here.”
Criminalization of migrants
Costa Rica is considered the Switzerland of Central America. The country, with 5,229,000 inhabitants, is a prosperous territory with strong public social services. But this paradise is starting to crumble. Since winning the elections in 2022, President Rodrigo Chaves, from the Social Democratic Progress Party, has been implementing liberal measures, reducing public money invested into education and healthcare.
“He criminalizes migrants. We have a xenophobic and macho president,” say members of Colectiva Feminista Volcánicas, a feminist collective formed by women exiled from Nicaragua by the Ortega and Murillo regime. Chaves appears close to the far-right president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and also doesn’t censure the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
In response to the increase in migration in Costa Rica in 2023, Chaves has published two decrees to reduce the rights of foreigners. Before, migrants could work legally from the moment they entered Costa Rica, for example; now they have to wait three months. Yet that waiting period is very short compared to those in countries such as Spain, where migrants must wait three years in an irregular situation to be able to have a work permit.
“The United States promised it was going to stop migration from Darién, but the safe mobility program it has presented [to move people from countries like Costa Rica to the U.S.] is not for that, because to be able to apply you have to have refugee status in Costa Rica, and that doesn’t solve the Darién problem,” explain members of Volcánicas.
The U.S. government sent a trans woman to a very conservative state, and she was met with violence.
They add that the U.S. government “doesn’t take anything into account when they assign you to a place. They sent a trans woman to a very conservative state, and she was met with violence. Luckily, something got misfiled and she was able to return because she hadn’t lost her refugee status in Costa Rica yet,” they add. In addition to this, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is not a reason to apply for refugee status under Costa Rican law.
The coordinator of the legal sector of SJM, Annie Rodríguez, explains that the immigration law and the refugee regulation “establishes belonging to a certain social group as one of the causes to request refuge. LGBTQ people and those facing gender-based violence could be included there. But the law doesn’t specifically [name any groups], so often these reasons are not taken into account for the assessment of each case.”
It’s not just the data and figures that tell this story. Some silences do too, like that of Victoria, a trans woman at that table in Casa Esperanza. When the rest spoke about their economic reasons for migrating, she remained silent.
Then there’s the silence of Antonio, who hasn’t replied on WhatsApp since June 12. The last time he did, he and Ibrain were in Honduras, staying at the house of a lady who had taken them in for five nights. Maybe he doesn’t feel like continuing to recount miseries. Maybe he lost his phone. He doesn’t change his profile picture either. Before, he used to do it almost daily.
