Today the NY Times published a story about the big business of moving migrants from South America through an area called the Darién gap.

Every step through the jungle, there is money to be made.

The boat ride to reach the rainforest: $40. A guide on the treacherous route once you start walking: $170. A porter to carry your backpack over the muddy mountains: $100. A plate of chicken and rice after arduous climbing: $10. Special, all-inclusive packages to make the perilous slog faster and more bearable, with tents, boots and other necessities: $500, or more.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are now pouring through a sliver of jungle known as the Darién Gap, the only land route to the United States from South America, in a record tide that the Biden administration and the Colombian government have vowed to stop.

But the windfall here at the edge of the continent is simply too big to pass up, and the entrepreneurs behind the migrant gold rush are not underground smugglers hiding from the authorities…

“We have organized everything: the boatmen, the guides, the bag carriers,” said Darwin García, an elected community board member and former town councilman in Acandí, a Colombian municipality at the entrance to the jungle.

The crush of migrants willing to risk everything to make it to the United States is “the best thing that could have happened” to a poor town like his, he said.

Julie Turkewitz, the author of the article, also posted a thread on X which actually shows what is going on.

Most people risking the Darién trek continue to be from Venezuela, like Samuel, 13, on the left. But Ecuadoreans fleeing a relatively new security crisis at home, like Geomaira, 21, right, are now the second largest group in the jungle. pic.twitter.com/KNcHN1RKqD

— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023

The Colombian towns at the entrance to the Darién have long been neglected by the Colombian gov.

Local leaders say pleas for help in dealing w/ the influx of migrants have fallen on deaf ears.

This is Acandí, at the mouth of the jungle, where residents lack even basic services. pic.twitter.com/91C34uftwc

— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023

The small Colombian towns near the jungle are poor and get no support from the government dealing with the problem so they turned the endless flow of migrants into their own cash cow. One Venezuelan called it “a ticket to Disney.” Ultimately, that may even be true for some of these people, many of whom will wind up in California.

Locals organized under a registered nonprofit called the New Light Darién Foundation explain the route and issue bracelets once migrants have paid for passage from Acandí to the border. pic.twitter.com/DsUZ9DUdsP

— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023

And naturally there are armed criminal groups cashing in as well.

More than 2,000 people now leave each day from the Las Tecas camp, where they begin their journey into the Darién jungle. pic.twitter.com/QTIQDmBKW9

— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023

Colombia now has a leftist president who has not interest in stopping the migration, which he expects will double next year.

The answer to this crisis, he said, was not to go “chasing migrants” at the border or to force them into “concentration camps” that blocked them from trying to reach the United States.

“I would say yes, I’ll help, but not like you think,” Mr. Petro said of the agreement with the Biden administration, which was big on ambition but thin on details. He said any solution to the issue had to focus on “solving migrants’ social problems, which do not come from Colombia.”

He expects half a million people to cross the Darién this year, he said, and then a million next year.

Panamanian officials on the receiving end of this influx see it differently.

“There is nothing humanitarian about this,” Ms. Gozaine, the Panamanian migration official, said at a recent news conference. “The children who die in the jungle, the women who are raped, the men who are raped, the people who are killed.”

All of these people are making their way to the United States and a border that is already so overrun with migrants that we are forced to just release some of them.

NEW: Images from Ajo, AZ show illegal immigrants being detained in an outdoor Border Patrol holding area yesterday as the Tucson, AZ sector is overwhelmed & CBP facilities there are overcapacity. The sector has seen approx 2,000 illegal crossings per day last 3 days in a row &… pic.twitter.com/rqp2MKOuF3

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) September 14, 2023

Border Patrol union sounding the alarm re: Tucson sector being inundated with illegal immigrants. https://t.co/Upu8LzKFji

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) September 14, 2023

From Melugin’s report at Fox News:

Sources told Fox that agents apprehended more than 7,400 illegal migrants at the border on Tuesday, and numbers have stayed above the 7,000 mark for three days straight. When combined with encounters at ports of entry, that number hit 9,100.

Sources told Fox News on Thursday that early indications show migrant encounters for August on track to exceed 230,000, making it the sixth month this fiscal year over 200,000.

This is already not sustainable and yet, at the same time, we have indications from South America that the numbers could be double next year. If blue city mayors like Eric Adams think they have a problem now, wait until we’re seeing 3 million border encounters next year.

Long ago the Biden administration refused to call this a crisis and insisted it was merely a challenge. At this point, it’s pretty clear that the administration has failed in dealing with that challenge.