14,000 US-bound migrants have returned south since Trump border changes,
UN says
[August 30, 2025]
By MEGAN JANETSKY
MEXICO CITY (AP) — 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% 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.
Colombia and other South American nations spent years pleading for aid
from the international community to cope with the brunt of Venezuela's
migratory crisis, before many of those same migrants began moving toward
the United States. Today, Venezuela's political and economic turmoil
rages on.
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A boat transporting migrants departs the Caribbean coastal village
of Miramar, Panama, for the Colombian border, Feb. 27, 2025, as
migrants return from southern Mexico after abandoning hopes of
reaching the U.S. in a reverse flow triggered by the Trump
administration's immigration crackdown. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix,
File)
Migrants, most of whom trekked days across the Darien Gap on their
way north, are even more vulnerable as they make their way back.
They have fewer funds to finance their journey and few prospects for
work when they get back. Migrants are dropped into regions with a
heavy presence of criminal groups that increasingly prey upon them,
the report said.
“Most of these people are already victims of human rights abuses,"
Scott Campbell, a U.N. human rights representative in Colombia, said
in a statement. “We urge authorities to aid people in this reverse
migration to prevent them from being exploited or falling into
trafficking networks run by illegal armed groups.”
The shift marks a radical reversal in one of the biggest mass
migrations in the world.
Migrants bus south through Mexico and other Central American nations
until they arrive in the center of Panama. From there, migrants pay
between $260 and $280 to ride on precarious boats packed with people
back to Colombia.
They take two different routes. Most island hop north of Panama
through the Caribbean Sea, landing in the small town of Necocli,
Colombia, where many started their journeys through the Darien.
Others travel south by sea along a jungled swath of Panama and
Colombia through the Pacific Ocean, where they are dropped off in
remote towns or the Colombian city of Buenaventura. Colombia’s
Ombudsman’s Office estimates around 450 people have taken the
perilous route, and the U.N. documented migrants getting scammed and
stranded, facing boat accidents and arriving beaten down and
vulnerable from their journey.
The region is one of the most violent in Colombia, and lack of state
presence is filled by warring armed groups.
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