Panama Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes has been sounding the alarm for months about massive numbers of Haitians moving through her country and traveling to the United States. The 15,000 Haitians that ended up under the Del Rio bridge were part of that exodus.
But Mouynes says that tens of thousands more Haitians are on the way. She says that since the beginning of 2021, 85,000 Haitians have crossed through Panama and she believes “they all are heading toward the U.S.”
Apparently, if Mouynes can be believed, the Biden administration knew of the Haitian exodus before the Del Rio incident and, despite being told it was coming, was caught completely flat-footed by the massive numbers of people who showed up at the border.
The Haitians have been coming from Colombia, traveling through the dangerous Darién Gap jungles into Panama before making their way northward through Central American and Mexico to to the U.S. Mouynes said senior officials from South American countries, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. met in August to address the issue, and she thought it was “shocking” that this had not happened sooner.
Mouynes said she also met with members of Congress and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this week.
In addition to the 85,000 who have made their way through Panama, another 30,000 Haitians are stuck in Columbia waiting for the go-ahead from Panama.
“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,” she said.
Mouynes told Axios she wants to see additional meetings between the U.S. and other countries in which they can work out plans to better control the volume of people coming through their respective borders. She said Haiti needs to be involved as well in order to get to the root of the problem.
“We all have a role to play in this issue, and the regional approach is the correct approach,” she said. “It is impossible for Panama to solve it on its own.”
Panama is eager to help because they’re just a waystation that refugees use before continuing their journey north. Feeding and sheltering the refugees is one thing. Accepting them for permanent residence, finding them a place to live, employment, health care, education for their children — few, if any nations are willing to do what is necessary to create a “home” and a new life for refugees.
And the U.S. is being asked to do this in the middle of a pandemic.
Open borders advocates who don’t care how we’re going to feed, clothe, house, employ, educate, and give a new life to the millions of people who want to come to America can afford to use grandiose, soaring rhetoric that welcomes “immigrants” and others to our shores, In truth, they haven’t a clue. They are mindlessly advocating a course of action, the consequences of which they cannot imagine.
That makes them extraordinarily dangerous.
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