“We sounded the alarm when we should have,” Panamanian Foreign Affairs Minister Erika Mouynes told Axios, expressing frustration over the Biden administration’s lack of preparation for the wave of Haitian migrants that recently hit the U.S. southern border.
After making a big show of sending 2,276 migrants back to Haiti earlier this month, the Biden administration let the rest of the 15,000 migrants living in a shantytown under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, into the country. The vast majority of these migrants were not even given a court date, just a Notice to Report obliging them to check in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in whatever city they end up in.
By letting the vast majority of Haitians reach their intended destination in the United States, President Joe Biden’s open border policies are only encouraging more migrants to come. And many of them come through Panama along the way.
“When we receive them on the Panamanian side, they’re malnourished. The children are in terrible condition, so even getting them up to a healthy state takes time,” Mouynes told Axios. “Let’s recognize that they all are heading toward the US,” Mourynes continued.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has shown no interest in working with Panama to stop the flow of migrants into the U.S. “We’ve engaged with every single authority that we can think of, that we can come across, to say, ‘Please, let’s pay attention to this,'” Mouynes told Axios. Axios reached out to the Biden administration for comment but received no response.
According to Mouynes, there are at least 60,000 more migrants on their way through Panama to the U.S.
There is no indication that the Biden administration has a plan, let alone the desire, to stop them.
