uncertain of what lay ahead in the dense jungle. The 36-year-old Venezuelan mother was among a million migrants who journeyed across the continent in recent years in the hopes of reaching the United States. But with legal pathways slashed under US President Donald Trump, she and thousands of other Venezuelans are now trying to make their way back in a “reverse migration.”

Over 14,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have returned to South America since Trump’s immigration crackdown began, according to figures from Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. Struggling to buy even food after failed attempts to stay in the US, Gómez can’t afford the $280-per-person charge for the more frequented Caribbean route to Colombia. So a growing number of migrants like her are boarding boats that ferry cargo between Panama’s capital and Colombia’s jungle-clad Pacific coast.

“We lost hope,” she said. “We’re trying to return, but we don’t have the money to go back.” ‘Only the clothes on their backs’. In recent years, migrants fleeing the crisis in Venezuela once crossed the perilous jungles of the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama and waited months in Mexico for an asylum appointment in the U.S. But when Trump took office, many of those people were left stranded in Mexico. Without other options, they turned back, winding down through Central America on buses. They chug aboard slow-moving cargo boats packed with merchandise along Panama’s other coast in the Pacific Ocean for days, before boarding precarious motor boats that shoot along the coast. The boats are often packed with 15 to 30 people. Hundreds so far have traveled the route, according to a United Nations report released earlier this month. “People arrive with very few resources, some with only the clothes on their backs,” said 56-year-old boat driver Nacor Rivera. “Many can’t pay for the boat ride, so I’ve had to help a lot of them, carrying them for free.” (Jamaica Gleaner)