“These are unprecedented numbers, never seen before in the jungle.”
Reinel Serrano, National Border Service officer of Panama, was referring to the more than 500,000 migrants who attempted to cross the Darien Gap, a 575,000-hectare tropical forest across Panama and Colombia.
Migrants face several risks when attempting the harrowing journey, including natural hazards ranging from high temperatures to wild animals to overflowing rivers. Desperate to succeed in their attempts, many turn to migrant smugglers, i.e., people who take advantage of migrants by exploiting their desperation to move – for a fee.
“Crossing through the Darien Gap is a fundamental part of the journey of migrants coming from other continents, because it is located at a point where smugglers take advantage of the conditions of the territory to be able to offer a service to migrants,” said Carlos Perez, UNODC Programme Officer.
Smugglers often perpetrate rape, kidnappings, and various other forms of violence and abuse against migrants during their journeys, exacerbating the dangers of the crossing.
Many of these smugglers belong to organized crime groups, who rake in an estimated $5 – 7 billion globally from migrant smuggling and human trafficking every year. Latin American and Caribbean countries serve as territories of origin, transit and destinations for these crimes.
“There is a criminal structure that sees irregular migration as an easy way to make money, charging astronomical sums to each person,” said Reinel.
An initiative led by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and INTERPOL, “Project Turquesa”, aims to identify cases of human trafficking and migrant smuggling and dismantle the organized criminal groups responsible.
It brings together 16 countries to promote interagency and international cooperation; investigate and prosecute human trafficking and migrant smuggling; and build understanding of the routes, trends, modus operandi and context of these crimes in the region.
“When a migrant in his or her country of origin decides to embark on the migratory route, we need to have authorities in these countries that are prepared to build transnational responses and who are able to identify and prosecute this crime,” said Carlos.
“From both organizations, we seek to support those key actors that are mandated to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and ensure that we are actually seeing convictions against criminal groups that engage in these crimes,” added Isaac Espinosa, Criminal Intelligence Analyst at INTERPOL.
Since 2019, Turquesa Operations have led to the arrest of over 1,000 smugglers and traffickers, hundreds of new investigations, and the identification of thousands of victims of human trafficking and migrant smuggling.
“We have been able to strengthen the capacities of prosecutors and judges to subsequently carry out operations that allow us to dismantle organized crime networks,” said Esperanza Montenegro, District Attorney of Panama.
Project Turquesa will run through September 2025 and is funded by the Government of Canada through its Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program (ACCBP).
