She was part of a mass migration from crisis-stricken Venezuela, fleeing to other Andean nations like Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and more before deciding to travel to the U.S. She lived five years in Chile, a country that as gradually closed its doors to Venezuelan migrants, before she decided to risk her life traveling through the Darien Gap and hopping country-to-country until she reached southern Mexico.
They once braved the jungles of the Darien Gap, trekking days along the perilous migrant passage dividing Colombia and Panama with a simple goal: Seek asylum in the U.S. Now, boat-by-boat, those migrants – mainly from the Andean nations of Venezuela and Colombia – have given up after President Donald Trump’s crackdown on asylum, and are returning to the countries they once sought to escape.
Some of the migrants waiting for their boat back to Colombia said they refused to return to Venezuela after the country’s recent elections, which have fueled democratic alarm and violence.
After leaving Chile, where he lived for eight years after fleeing Venezuela, the family waited four months for an asylum appointment, hoping to reunite with family in the U.S. “I don’t know if we will get there alive, but if we make it, the idea is to go back to Chile.
But she was anxious to return home to her four children and mother, who sent her some money to get home, which she raised from a raffle, she said, sitting in front of a blaring music with other migrants while she waited for a boat.
