Image Credit: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images 
Panama’s foreign minister has warned that another wave of some 60,000 migrants, mostly Haitian nationals, is now headed toward the southern US border.
Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes expressed exasperation during a visit to Washington DC this week, saying that Panama has been warning the Biden administration for months about the recent surge in irregular migration.
‘We sounded the alarm when we should have,’ Mouynes told Axios. ‘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.”‘
In recent weeks, shocking scenes of human misery emerged from a squalid migrant camp near the border in Texas, which swelled to 15,000 at the height of the crisis, as the unprepared Border Patrol scrambled to stem the flow of illegal crossings.
Most of the Haitian migrants had been living in South American countries like Chile for years, but headed toward the US when they learned that President Joe Biden was halting deportations of Haitian nationals already in the country.
Traveling by land from South America, they must pass through the isthmus country of Panama, with many making the trek through the treacherous jungles of the Darien Gap.