Jaquet, Panama (AP) — Mariella Gomez and her two children were swarming over a gas tank sloshing for 17 hours as the boat bounced across the choppy Pacific ocean.
The 36-year-old Venezuelan mother was one of a million immigrants who have traveled the continent in recent years in hopes of reaching the United States. But she and thousands of other Venezuelans are about to return now as legal paths have been cut under US President Donald Trump “Reverse transition.”
That’s all 14,000 immigrants, mainly from VenezuelaColombia, Panama and Costa Rica figures say they have returned to South America since Trump’s immigration crackdown began.
Venezuela’s Mariella Gomez will travel on a journey south after arriving at Jacket’s large cargo ship on Panama’s Pacific coast on Thursday, September 18, 2025, with his son Mattias on the boat towards the shore and reaching the US. (AP Photo/Matias Delac Roa)
After a failed attempt to go beyond the US, struggling to buy food, Gomez cannot afford to pay a $280 per person for the more frequent Caribbean route to Colombia. So The number of immigrants like her is growing. Between the capital of Panama and the jungle-covered Pacific coast of Colombia.
The new route is half the price and twice as dangerous.
“We lost hope,” she said. “We’re about to come back, but we don’t have the money to go back.”
“Just clothes on the back”
Recently, immigrants Escape from the crisis in Venezuela Crossing the dangerous jungle of the Darien gap between Colombia and Panama, waiting several months in Mexico to await asylum appointments in the US, but when Trump took office, many of those people were Stuck in Mexico left. Without other options, they turned their backs and ran through Central America by bus.
They are on a slow, moving cargo ship packed with goods along the other coasts of Panama in the Pacific Ocean before boarding a volatile motorboat that shoots along the coast. Boats are often packed with 15-30 people. Hundreds have traveled the route so far, according to a UN report released earlier this month.
Venezuela’s Abraham Castro is on a cargo ship along with other Venezuelan immigrants through Panama Bay as his partner and her two sons travel south after reaching America on Wednesday, September 17, 2025.
“People arrive with very few resources, some have clothes on their backs,” said Nakal Rivera, a 56-year-old boat driver. “A lot of people can’t get on the boat, so I had to help many of them and carry them for free.”
In June, one of the boats carrying 38 people crashed at sea, injuring a pregnant woman, a child and a disabled person who lost a wheelchair.
They landed in the Jungle Swath in Colombia Areas where armed groups exist According to a report from the United Nations, it is prey to immigrants with little access to shelters or medical care.
Scott Campbell, Columbia’s UN Human Rights Director, said:
Immigrants land with serious cases of dehydration, burns, malnutrition and mental health issues. Those without money “will remain marginalized in inhumane states,” the report said.
That was the case of Jesus Aguilar, a Venezuelan immigrant who had been stuck in the countryside of Panama town of Darien Gap for two months. He slowly raised money slowly to board a boat to Colombia after locals offered to clean the farm.
Try your luck in South America
Like Gomez’s family, they spent months in Panama City and saved money back to Venezuela, but when they were short, they decided to take a cheap route along the Pacific Ocean.
Sitting on a gas tank, Gomez holds his 5-year-old son, wrapped in a blanket, hugging the cradle. The family fled the South American country in 2017 in the face of a spiral economy and an increase in government crackdown.
Venezuelan immigrants, her two sons, Mariella Gomez and partner Abraham Castro, will return home on Thursday, September 18th, 2025, on a freight ship on the Pacific coast of Panama. (AP Photo/Matias Delac Roa)
For years she lived in Colombia and Peru. In a country struggling to manage the crash of vulnerable people, Gomez, unable to achieve his goal, began to look to the United States, hoping to build a new life.
After crossing the Darien Gap in October and then crossing the US-Mexican border to Texas, her family was soon swept to the US Border Patrol and handed over to Mexican authorities. I dropped them in southern Mexico.
Shortly afterwards, she decided that her only way was to go home. With no work and the cartels preying on immigrants like her, staying in southern Mexico was not an option.
She said at least in Venezuela, she has her home and her family.
“We would have risked our lives and the lives of my children,” Gomez said. “We just want God to protect us.”
Now when she gets home she doesn’t know What she finds in Venezuelafaces continued crackdown on government opposition after last year’s contested elections.
She said that if President Nicolas Maduro’s government is in power, staying in her country doesn’t seem like an option. “I will have to leave my country again, maybe I will have to go to Chile,” she pondered. “I’ll have to try my luck in another country. Again.”
“But now we need to focus on going to Colombia,” she added.
Venezuela’s Abraham Castro and his partner’s son, Mattias Gomez, walked the beaches of Jacket on the Pacific coast of Panama, and from there will travel south towards Colombia on Friday, September 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delac Roa)
Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
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