CIS analyst Todd Bensman completed field research August 6-18, 2024 about the Darien Gap immigration passageway through which more than 1.5 million foreign nationals have reached the U.S. southern border over the past three-plus years. At the link above, you can find X Tweets Bensman posted of video and photos from the ground. Here you can also find Bensman’s published reports. Bensman’s purpose for traveling first to Colombia’s immigrant staging towns and then to Panama’s camps and impacted villages was to assess the impacts of a new Panama plan to “close” the passageway – supposedly with pledged U.S. help. For background, read Bensman’s most recently published analyses on these potentially consequential new developments for the U.S. mass migration crisis now in its fourth year and its impact on the presidential election: Panama’s Pinch Point: Closing the gap would be a big step toward stopping the flow of migrants north. and A Dramatic Biden U-Turn on Darien Gap Immigrant Passage Policy
VIDEO Report from Colombia: A Cartel, UN, and NGOs Fuel U.S. Border Crisis
A new Center for Immigration Studies video report uncovers one of the world’s most organized human smuggling operations. It operates out of a northwest Colombia and is controlled by a paramilitary organization called the Gaitanist Self Defense Force of Colombia (a/k/a the Clan del Golfo), which controls the area with an iron fist. Todd Bensman, the Center’s national security fellow, spent nearly two weeks investigating the human smuggling routes from Colombia to Panama’s Darien Gap. His trip included hours of travel by boat across the Uraba Gulf to a cartel-controlled landing site in Colombia. He also visited a UN run/cartel-controlled staging area, speaking with migrants and NGO staff and even members of the cartel.
Final Report: Has Panama Closed the Notorious ‘Darien Gap’ Mass Migration Route to the U.S. Border?
The purpose of this report is to assess early progress of President Mulino’s highly consequential closure initiative, to chart its direction, provide a medium-term prognosis, and identify challenges to achieving Panamanian goals that might improve current U.S. border security and immigration-control management. This report is based on first-hand field research conducted from August 6-18, 2024, on both sides of the Darien Gap, which in Colombia encompasses migration trail entry points around the Gulf of Uraba and in Panama trail exits in Darien Province and Embera tribal reservation lands. This report is based on direct observation and interviews with migrants, residents, United Nations officials, smugglers, non-governmental organization personnel, area residents, and top Panamanian officials.
SEE ALSO: Excerpts from a CIS Conversation with Director General Jorge Gobea, head of Panama’s National Border Service – From a recorded English-language discussion between Director General Gobea and CIS analyst Todd Bensman on August 13, 2024, at SENAFRONT headquarters in Panama City. The interview focused on newly seated Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino’s vow to “close” the Darien Gap migrant trail immediately, in a plan reliant on American funding for large-scale repatriation flights.
Dispatch from Colombia: South American ally permits mass migration; Biden/Harris Look Away (The American Mind)
Perhaps my most important finding was that there was no evidence of Colombian interdiction in the smooth-running Gaitanista human smuggling machine. Instead, I discovered a wide-open marriage between the Gaitanistas and local, state, and federal Colombian government agencies, the United Nations, and non-governmental migrant help groups, altogether engaged in the most productive, functionally well-oiled, and industrialized human smuggling assembly line operation anywhere on the planet.
Daily Mail Online: Biden’s migrant ‘super-highway’ revealed: Millions in US taxpayer cash turned the world’s deadliest smuggling route into a ‘safe’ passage… how TODD BENSMAN was threatened for exposing it
For a full day, I’d been flying a drone out the window of my hotel room – filming the Gaitanistas shuttling men, women and children from the docks to the Darien Gap to begin their journey.But when I began documenting the operation from the ground, I was spotted and chased into a convenience store by three Gaitanista goons. ‘Hand over the camera,’ one of the hulking men demanded.
VIDEO REPORT: Panama Tribal Chiefs Swamped by Migrants Slam US, UN, NGOs
In a video report by the Center for Immigration Studies, Embera-Wounaan tribal chiefs voiced strong condemnation of U.S. border policies that are attracting a destructive wave of mass migration through their communities. Todd Bensman, the Center’s National Security Fellow and author of the report, traveled from Colombia to the Darien Gap – a remote, roadless jungle on the Panama-Colombia border – where he conducted an exclusive interview with all five Embera chiefs. They unanimously agreed that mass migration through the Darien Gap, drawn by changes in U.S. policies in 2021, has caused significant harm to their traditional way of life.
CIS Parsing Immigration Podcast: Investigating Panama’s Efforts to Cut Off Migration
National Security Fellow Todd Bensman joins the podcast after returning from a lengthy trip to the Darien region. He shares how Panama’s newly elected president, who took office on July 1, is working to close the Darien Gap to the massive surge of migrants.
Video: Colombia Chaos: In the thick of the notorious Darien Gap migrant trails
Bensman reports from one of many small springboard towns into the Darien Gap. Reporting based on Bensman’s August 6-18 reporting in Colombia and Panama
CIS: Exclusive Interview: Panama Border Security Chief Says Many U.S.-Bound Terror Suspects Caught in Darien Gap Region
New official information about terrorism suspects interrupted on their way to the American border comes by way of an exclusive Center for Immigration Studies interview with the chief of Panama’s National Border Service (SENAFRONT), Director General Jorge Gabea, at agency headquarters just off the Panama Canal.
VIDEO: A Ride on Panama’s Wild Side
While reporting on Colombia-Panama’s notorious “Daien Gap” in August, Todd Bensman traveled by motorized paranga boat up a river for three hours to see a village hub for mass migration exiting the notorious Darien Gap. This is his view of the trip. Subscribe to Bensman’s Youtube channel.
NY Post: Five Chiefs of Forsaken Tribe in Panama’s Notorious ‘Darien Gap’ Migrant Passage Slam Biden/Harris, UN, and Immigrant Advocates ‘You are Finishing Us!’
SEE ALSO FOX NEWS DIGITAL STORY: Says Expert [Bensman]: Biden-Harris border policies wreak havoc on indigenous tribe, ‘Pushed aside and destroyed’ and Bensman interview on the WAR ROOM Indigenous Chiefs Blame Democrat Border Policies for Cultural Devastation-Bensman’s Scandalous WarRoom Report
The Daily Wire: Biden-Harris Mass Migration Is ‘Killing All The Indians in Panama’
METETI, Panama – The 19,000-strong indigenous Embera-Wounaan tribe resides far beyond the reach of American pollsters who regularly log high voter disapproval of the three-plus years of illegal mass migration over the U.S. Southwest Border. But if anyone ever sought Embera opinion about distant U.S. border policy – and, almost incredibly, I may be the only one who ever has – they’d get an ear full.
VIDEO: A United Nations of Mass Migration
Encounters with a multinational diversity of immigrants crossing the Colombia-Panama Darien Gap, August 2024 Todd Bensman for the Center for Immigration Studies Subscribe to Bensman’s Youtube channel
New York Post:Dems Abandon Wide-Open Gap
PANAMA CITY — On July 1, Panama’s new President José Raúl Mulino took office on an unprecedented promise to close a major route of illegal immigration — through which at least 1.5 million foreign nationals have poured through since 2021. Mulino said he would close the infamous Darién Gap, a 70-mile roadless jungle wilderness that South American migrants traverse on their way north to the United States. He secured a promise from the Biden-Harris administration to help accomplish this: money and possibly even planes to carry illegally arriving migrants back to their countries.But nearly two months after the US pledged a “removal flights program” to support Panama, the aid is nowhere to be found and the immigrants, after sheltering in place at home or in Colombia to see if Panama might actually deport people, are starting to flow once again through the Darién Gap.
VIDEO: What Mass Migration Looks Like in Slow Motion – from the Darien Gap
Piranga boats ferry U.S.-bound migrants out of the Darien Gap by the thousands. Subscribe to Bensman’s YouTube channel
VIDEO: How Panama Processes US-Bound Illegal Immigrants in Remote Jungle Embera Indian Village
The Embera native village of Bajo Chiquito has become a major transit hub for illegal immigrants moving from Darien Gap to Panamanian-arranged buses. Subscribe to Bensman’s Youtube channel
BENSMAN IN THE NEWS, DARIEN GAP
American Mind Podcast (Claremont Institute): Immigration Debacle in Colombia
Immigration expert Todd Bensman gives his firsthand account of the shocking immigration debacle in Colombia, and what the Trump team ought to be doing about it.
In War Room from Panama’s National Assembly: Democrats National Security Crisis: U.S. Fails to Seize Opportunity in Darien Gap Standoff
El Conservador Radio Show: Todd Bensman Reports on U.S. Failure to Help Panama Stop Illegal Immigration
Fox News Digital: Says Expert [Bensman] Biden-Harris border policies wreak havoc on indigenous tribe, ‘Pushed aside and destroyed’
Indigenous Chiefs Blame Democrat Border Policies for Cultural Devastation-Bensman’s Scandalous WarRoom Report
Two segments on Hillsdale College’s Radio Free Hour podcast talking about the Darien Gap
War Room: How The Panama Government Is Helping End Migrant Super-Highway Darien Gap
Washington DC’s WMAL talking Darien gap migration trail closure fail
Spectator TV What Bensman Saw at The Darien Gap
Subscribe to the BensmanOnline Youtube channel here
