14,000 UN migrants return south after Trump changes border policies

Mexico City,sep,1: More than 14,000 mainly Venezuelan migrants who hoped to reach the United States have reversed course and turned south since U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown began, according to a report published Friday by the governments of Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica.

The phenomenon, known as "reverse flow" migration, is largely made up of Venezuelan migrants who fled their country's long-running economic, social and political crises only to encounter U.S. immigration policy no longer open to asylum-seekers.

Migration through the treacherous Darien Gap on the border of Colombia and Panama peaked in 2023 when more than half a million migrants crossed. That flow slowed somewhat in 2024, but dried up almost completely early this year.

Friday's report, published with support of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that northward migration had dropped 97 per cent this year. Migrants traveling south interviewed in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia by those countries' ombudsmen offices were almost all Venezuelans (97%) and about half of them said they planned to return to Venezuela, according to the report. Nearly all said they were returning because they could no longer legally reach the U.S.

Since 2017, around 8 million people have fled the crisis in Venezuela. For years, those migrants flocked to other South American nations, including Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and more. That changed in 2021, when hundreds of thousands of people set out for the U.S., braving the Darien Gap along the way.

A U.S. government smartphone app became the main way for asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. under the Biden administration. Then thousands of migrants became stranded in Mexico when Trump ended the use of the app on his first day in office.

Now, those migrants who were still trying to reach the U.S. when Trump entered and changed border policies have reversed course, traveling back to South America. Around a quarter of those interviewed planned to go to neighboring Colombia, previously the epicenter of the mass migration from Venezuela. Others said they didn't know where they were going.(AP)