EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
President Trump has essentially closed the door to immigrants who had been trying to make it across the U.S. southern border. Not only that, but he's also sending planeloads of migrants south and others to prison in El Salvador. His policies have provoked a so-called reverse migration, and migrants say they feel like they're not welcome anywhere. I was recently in Panama, where the fallout of the policy is laid bare.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hola.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hola.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hola.
PERALTA: To get to the tiny island of Gardi Sugdub, you have to drive through the forests of Panama until you hit the Caribbean coast, then you have to get on a little boat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE STARTING)
PERALTA: This is paradise, really - turquoise waters dotted by little islands with white sand. We heard this remote island - population 200 - is a stop along the reverse migrant trail. Venezuelans who have given up on the American dream make a stop here on their way back home.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)
PERALTA: And as soon as we dock, a group of Venezuelans surround us.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: One of them says they made it all the way to Matamoros. They were just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, when President Trump came into office. They saw other Venezuelans turn themselves in to U.S. authorities for a chance to seek asylum, but some ended up detained, others deported back to southern Mexico.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We decided there was no way forward," he says, "so we started heading south." They have been on this journey for almost a year. This is one more act of desperation. Trying to find a safer path home, they ended up on this remote island. When I ask for their names, they decline. They're afraid what they say might be used against them by authorities in Panama and Venezuela or even in the U.S. Plus, they don't have money to get on a boat to head to Colombia, and they make it clear the islanders are not the most welcoming people. So we let them be, and we walk past the bar in front of people partying for carnival.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The island is autonomous, controlled by the Guna people, who have lived here for hundreds of years. It's a speck in the middle of the Caribbean. There are no cars, so the buildings are separated by narrow dirt walkways.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Papa.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Anisberto Herman is the secretary of the town, and he leads us to the Congress, a huge thatched roof hall with pews all facing a few hammocks where the saylas - the spiritual leaders - rest. Journalists don't come here often, so Herman knows exactly why we're here.
ANISBERTO HERMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We reject the presence of all the migrants," he says.
HERMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Because they always come here," he says. The migrants started coming here as soon as Trump took office. They came 20 at a time. Herman says they quickly overwhelmed this small island of about 200 people. As we speak, Nelson Morgan, the island's spiritual leader, emerges from his hammock.
NELSON MORGAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "The people here don't want the migrants," he says. And then he turns to the prejudice that has been building up here. The migrant women are prostitutes, he says. Some of the migrant men gawk at our women taking showers outdoors.
HERMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Some of them are good," Herman adds, "but so many others are drug dealers." I ask what he thinks about President Trump.
HERMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "He's behaving badly with us," he says. I tell him, but some of the things you say about immigrants is what Trump has said.
(Speaking Spanish).
It's a little ironic, no?
HERMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Yes, but the truth is, we're not prepared for this. These migrants came out of nowhere." The truth is, the whole American continent is facing a huge unknown. For the past decade, as countries in Latin America descended into crisis, millions fled north. It was an unprecedented migration, and most of them were headed to the United States, so a whole system was created, from bus routes to apps, to try to control that flow. But Trump came into office. He closed down the border and upended the whole system. Panamanian political analyst Rodrigo Noriega.
RODRIGO NORIEGA: The system collapsed, and everybody's looking the other way.
PERALTA: Migrants have ended up jailed in El Salvador, trapped at hotels or stranded in camps in the middle of a jungle in Panama. And this is just the beginning because hundreds of thousands of migrants are still in Mexico, and the United States has decided to strip about a million migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba of their legal status.
NORIEGA: And it will be just like a waterfall. People come from Guatemala to Nicaragua to El Salvador to Costa Rica to Panama.
PERALTA: The fear, says Noriega, is that an open-door policy could lead to tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in these countries. So the policy most have taken is essentially the same as the United States - we don't want migrants in our countries.
NORIEGA: In a way, we are accomplices of this policy.
PERALTA: Back on the island, we find another group of Venezuelans who are hoping to catch a boat toward Colombia the next day. Marta is 59. Astrid and Jesus are traveling with their 4-year-old daughter. All of them left Venezuela nearly a year ago. They crossed a jungle. They've had to beg for food and sleep on the street. But they made it to Mexico. They were so close to the American dream.
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Marta says she had spent five months in Mexico, waiting for an appointment so she could ask for asylum in the United States.
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We were all fooled by the hope of an appointment, she says. "But when Trump came into office, he killed the CBP One app, rescinded all appointments, and stopped issuing new ones." The doors closed, and they gave up on the American dream.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Spanish).
JESUS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I just want to rest, says Jesus. "I want to get back home, be with my family, but getting home has been just as difficult as trying to make it to the United States." Some of their friends have been stopped along the way, rounded up at camps in Costa Rica and Panama.
JESUS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The U.S. closed its doors, and everyone followed suit. All of them fled the dire economic situation in Venezuela, and they fled a government they don't agree with, but now they're up against the wall.
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Laughter).
PERALTA: The only choice, says Marta, is to start kissing the Venezuelan president's a**.
JESUS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "God help me," says Jesus. "I'm going to work, not deal with that pig." Suddenly, everyone gets serious, like the reality of going back home has hit them. But they're not sad.
JESUS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "All this suffering," Jesus says, has made them value Venezuela - the beaches, the humor, even the bad government flour they use to make their beloved arepas.
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "This is a test from God, you know?"
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Maybe we got ourselves into this mess because we didn't value our lives."
MARTA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "But I know our lives will change," she says. "I know God has something good in store for us."
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