Somebody send this to Bill Nigut!
El Tiempo (Bogota, Colombia)
10/25/10
The American Dream makes a stopover in Colombia
Journalists from “El Tiempo” (believed to be Colombia’s largest newspaper) traced the main route used by illegal aliens in Colombia: using 27 clandestine routes through Colombia’s southwestern most department (state) of Narino, bordering on Ecuador, those aliens begin a trip of over 840 miles toward Uraba (on the border with Panama). African or Asian migrants are charged up to U.S. $1,500 to make that trip.
Two o’clock in the morning, near Turbo, a city on the east side of the Gulf of Uraba, the border between Colombia and Panama on the Caribbean, twenty-five persons fit themselves as much as they are able into a launch no longer than 7 meters long (22.9 feet) as it starts to leave the smelly port waters, with its engine almost turned off so as not to call attention. The launch slowly parallels the coast toward Choco (the Colombian state that land borders Panama). In the following four hours only two of them, the boat driver and his assistant, will be able to stand and stretch their legs. The other 23 have been ordered not to raise their head. They are illegal aliens who have crossed half of Colombia while hiding, and for whom the “American dream” seems to be a little closer. After a switch to another launch, they are taken into the jungle, and, following that, they begin a five day trek through the hill country of Darien toward Panama, the next stage on the traffic of humans en route to the United States. And in Choco, as in Africa, those aliens have no choice but to put their lives in the hands of the “coyotes” who, by then, will have stripped them of at least 15 thousand dollars to take them to the “promised land.” The “icing on the cake” (the crossing from Mexico to the U.S.) will cost them a similar amount.
Up until the end of last August, DAS, the Colombian immigration authority, had deported or expelled 607 of those illegal aliens, almost double the total for 2009. There have been 1,800 since 2007, from faraway lands such as China, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Almost none speak Spanish, and the only thing they know is that if some official catches them and returns them to Ecuador, they will try again. Six Eritreans who were returned from Cauca (a Colombian city) to Ecuador on September 4th were again nabbed by DAS 13 days later, this time in another Colombian city.
The government of Ecuador, where Colombians must today enter with an annotated judicial record, decided in June of 2008 to allow citizens of any country in the world to enter without the need of a visa. Immediately, webs of traffickers who operate from the Arab Emirates and from Amsterdam took the opportunity to adjust their routes. Where, before, small groups of Africans would enter Colombia through the border with Brazil after a very hard, month long voyage across the Atlantic, hidden in cargo ships, now they started to show up by the dozens, coming from Quito. The arrival of Asians also shot up at the Mariscal Sucre Airport (Quito’s airport). The problem became such that two months ago Ecuador’s president decided to once again require visas for various African and Asian countries.
In Ecuador, the same groups who send rifle ammunition and explosives for the guerillas also traffic in illegal aliens. It’s a business that pays in the millions – the third most lucrative, after drug traffic and black market in weapons – that in Colombia ends up enriching the insurgent armed groups. Transit to Panama is controlled by Group # 57 of the FARC (Colombia’s revolutionary guerillas) and costs no less than 400 dollars. From the time they leave, the aliens keep their goal of arriving in the United States firmly in mind.
In the last two years, more Eritreans arrived in Colombia than had ever before been recorded. One hundred fifty have so far been detained this year from that African country at immigration control points. And thousands of Somalis travel by land to South Africa, and from there to Brazil and to Ecuador with false passports.
Last year, Bogota’s Superior Tribunal sentenced Yohannes Enefh Negussie to 5 years in jail for people smuggling. His network, according to DAS, was able to move 2,000 persons, almost all from Africa, in 3 years. One of the tactics used by Africans and Asians who are detained is to claim asylum, a right which would be amply justifiable given the conditions in their countries of origin. The problem is that the smugglers recommend that they do so only to avoid deportation back to Ecuador (the rule is to return those persons to the country from where they arrived) and then later to continue on the way to Panama.
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