International
Migrant women, victims of theft, rape and with their children in tow for the Darién
Migration has long ceased to be a thing for men. Women alone, with children or with their partners leave their homes behind having to go through a “hell” like the Darién jungle, where they are victims of rape or robberies while carrying their children: “come on, there is little left.”
At the checkpoint of Bajo Chiquito, the first indigenous town that migrants arrive at after crossing the Darién jungle, the natural border between Panama and Colombia, the Panamanian authorities take the data of the hundreds of newcomers who, exhausted, are waiting for patients in their turn. Behind the officials, apart, sits a girl. Suddenly, it seems that he has identified someone in the queue.
“Do you know this girl?” the officer tells a woman. “Are you 12 years old?” she replies. They ask the girl and she nods. The officer then asks him if he knows where his mother is. “Yes, it’s coming further back.”
Venezuelan Karely Salazar, 31, travels with her daughters, 7, 10 and 12 years old. They have gone to the village outpatient clinic. The older girl smiles, protective with one of her sisters. The mother holds the other in her arms. “Right now I have this smaller one with a fever, with a cold fever, a two-day-old girl stuck in the river,” the woman explains to EFE, exhausted. “The father of them is in Venezuela,” he clarifies, without giving details.
“Thank God we crossed the jungle, but it really wasn’t easy, very difficult for the children,” he says. Children have to be climbed by stones, if you slip they can fall into the void, into the river, “and they go hungry, and they get cold,” and they can get ahead or stay behind.
“Did your eldest daughter get lost?” “Yes,” the mother nods, and her face changes. She says that the second day of walking she felt very bad on one leg, she couldn’t move, and the little girl walked among the people and “lost her way.”
“I didn’t sleep last night, because the girl got ahead of me and reached a part of the river that had to stop and she woke up there and I still woke up inside the jungle. Last night I cried and cried because I didn’t know where I was,” says the mother.
Try to explain yourself, to make it understood: “I came alone and with three girls, imagine, pull here, pending this one, take care that you fall, but no, the jungle is really not recommended, really not.”
Hundreds of migrants, or thousands, pass through that jungle every day when the flow is highest.
According to data from the Panamanian authorities, after the historical record of more than 520,000 migrants who crossed the Darién in 2023, so far this year more than 130,000 have already done so, including about 104,000 adults, of which about 35% are women. And among the more than 28,600 minors, 47% are girls.
The Panamanian authorities generally maintain a harsh speech against migration, remembering that on the Colombian side the control is held by the criminal group of the Gulf Clan, which in 2023 received about 68 million dollars for the passage of the migrants, in addition to other gangs that steal and attack those who pass by.
The director of Migration of Panama, Samira Gozaine, goes further: “There are stories of people who say that mothers put the children to drown in the river because it weighs heavily on them, when (…) the hills become very dense and they can’t continue, they simply abandon them to their fate,” she told EFE a year ago.
For the internationalist lawyer and human rights activist Iván Chanis, this type of speech “dehumanizes” and moves away from reality, because, as he explains to EFE, “what mother wants to leave her daughter behind?”
Luisannys Mundaraín, 22 years old, carries her baby in her arms. It gives him breastfeed. He tells EFE that when he crossed one of the cliffs with the baby, he slipped, but he was able to hold on at the last moment. To which were added the snakes, spiders, rivers, and “the thieves who steal one, also rape women.”
Mundaraín then recounts how his group was intercepted in “a ridge” by a group of armed hooded people, who asked him for “100 dollars for each, and the one who did not give him the money had to deliver the phone, if it was not an iPhone no, or if it was a woman he had to stay there, you know what for.”
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) assured, before the Panamanian authorities vetoed them from continuing to provide medical care in the country, that they treated more than 1,300 people for sexual violence in the Darién between April 2021 and January 2024.
“What you live in is a total hell,” says the young woman, but the crisis in Venezuela gave her no other option, with 12-hour work in a supermarket for 20 dollars a week, when “a pack of diapers was that if at 5 dollars and the most expensive food.”
Thus, when in the election campaign some Panamanian politicians were heard saying that they wanted to close the 266 kilometers of border in Darién, the young woman sighed.
“Something impossible to close it, because that way there are thousands of dangers, migrants will always continue to go through what they suffer in those countries, we are poor. They will always keep happening, risking their lives, the children, everything,” he concludes.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
International
Trump administration blasts judge’s ruling reinstating TPS for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump criticized a federal judge’s ruling on Friday that reinstated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua, stressing that the immigration program was never intended to serve as a “de facto asylum system.”
On Thursday, Judge Trina Thompson extended protections for about 7,000 Nepalese immigrants, whose TPS was set to expire on August 5. The ruling also impacts roughly 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans, whose TPS protections were scheduled to end on September 8.
Immigrants covered by TPS had sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alleging that the program’s termination was driven by “racial animus” and stripped them of protection from deportation.
DHS Deputy Undersecretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement saying the decision to end TPS was part of a mandate to “restore the integrity” of the immigration system and return the program to its original purpose.
“TPS was never conceived as a de facto asylum system; however, that is how previous administrations have used it for decades,” McLaughlin emphasized.
She also criticized Judge Thompson, calling the ruling “another example” of judges “stirring up claims of racism to distract from the facts.”
McLaughlin added that DHS would appeal the decision and take the legal battle to higher courts.
The Trump administration has also terminated TPS protections for approximately 160,000 Ukrainians, 350,000 Venezuelans, and at least half a million Haitians, among other immigrant groups.
International
Trump to build $200M ballroom at the White House by 2028
The U.S. government under President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that it will begin construction in September on a new 8,000-square-meter ballroom at the White House.
The announcement was made by Karoline Leavitt, the administration’s press secretary, during a briefing in which she explained that the expansion responds to the need for a larger venue to host “major events.”
“Other presidents have long wished for a space capable of accommodating large gatherings within the White House complex… President Trump has committed to solving this issue,” Leavitt told reporters.
The project is estimated to cost $200 million, fully funded through donations from Trump himself and other “patriots,” according to a government statement. Construction is scheduled to begin in September and is expected to be completed before Trump’s term ends in 2028.
The Clark Construction Group, a Virginia-based company known for projects such as the Capital One Arena and L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., has been selected to lead the project.
The new ballroom will be built on the East Wing of the White House, expanding the iconic residence with a space designed for state dinners, official ceremonies, and large-scale events.
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
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