THIS IS AN UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Hello, I'm John Milewski and this is Wilson's Center NOW, a production of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
My guest today is Molly O'Toole. Molly is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author who is now also a fellow with the Wilson Center Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative and Mexico Institute. She's working on a book tentatively titled “The Route: How American Policy, a Billion-Dollar Black Market, and Indomitable Resilience are Bringing the World’s Refugees to the US Border.”
It's about global migration through the Americas, and we're going to learn about it today. Molly, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So tell us about the behind the scenes. When did this go from reporting to I'm writing a book. Wow. Well, actually, from the very beginning, when I first sort of stumbled on this this phenomenon, for lack of a better word, and I should come up with one with one.
I knew this was a book, so I actually first sort of encountered this. And by this I mean this incredibly dramatic, rapid shift in who is coming to the US-Mexico border, why they're coming to the US-Mexico border, and how they're coming to the US-Mexico border. And I first encountered this in southern Mexico, on the border with Guatemala, in a city called Tapachula, where 99.99% of people that are making their way to the US-Mexico border, they pass through this one particular city in Mexico.
I first encountered this phenomenon in 2016, actually, it was two weeks a week and a half after the 2016 presidential election, and I went to southern Mexico thinking I was mostly going to be interviewing Central Americans. And instead I found myself interviewing Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Cameroonians, Pakistanis, Indians, Nepalese, really people from all over the world. I and I had heard a little bit about this, but seeing it, really seeing it in person, seeing it on the ground and hearing about their journeys, I mean, depending on where you're coming from, this is the longest human migration on the planet.
And I thought, this has to be a book. It's too short. You can't fit it into a newspaper article. You can't fit it into a soundbite. In order to really wrap your arms around how big how global migration to the United States has become. I thought it really had to be a book. So every place I worked since 2016, I've been sort of begging them to let me do this.
But I've been working on the book full time since 2021, so I was able to sort of transition and start to make that that dream of a book a reality. These changes that you talk about, the who, the why and the how, when did they occur, When did things shift from what you expected to find to where, of course, you actually found?
Well, you know, this is this route. And by roughly speaking, I'm referring to a migration path that takes people from all around the world. Many of them will start in Brazil. Some of them will start in Ecuador. But Brazil is really the most common entry point for what's referred to as extra continental or extraterritorial migrants. It's basically people coming, everyone else coming from outside of the Western Hemisphere, but using the Western Hemisphere as a land bridge to the US-Mexico border.
The path from Brazil to the US-Mexico border has existed for some time, but we really started to see more significant numbers sort of starting, you know, mid 2000s. In fact, the Panamanians, for example, who have excellent migration data because the Darian Gap is in their territory, which I'm sure we'll talk about and many other countries along the route, they didn't even really start tracking this migration, even keeping the numbers until 2010.
So we really started to see people use this route in more significant numbers. Actually, it really in some respects started with the Haitians. So after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, are you and many Haitians who made their way to Brazil for the World Cup and the Olympics, Brazil really needed workers and so really liberalized its already quite liberal visa policies.
And then when the Brazilian economy really took some hits in the mid 20 tens, then you started to see this outward flow of Haitians and then you saw Cubans, you saw Nicaraguans, Venezuela, of course. So it started to increase in a really significant way and diversify as Africans, as well, Asians as well, Arabs as well, probably starting around the mid mid 20 tens.
So so 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2016 was a quite significant year actually. A lot of people were trying to get in before the Trump administration took office. The smugglers really used Trump as a candidate. A presidential candidate used his own language to sort of say, You got to get in, and now we're never now or never. So there were some sort of high years that we were seeing and you could sort of you could sort of predictive or look at the various factors around the world.
And I won't belabor the point, but, you know, we do have we do have mass displacement on the level that the world has never seen in, at least in modern human history. So it's that combined with really proliferation of personal technology, the sort of carving out of this route in the mid 20 tens COVID itself as a pushback to the collapse of Venezuela, the more viable this route became with these liberal these policies in Brazil and Ecuador, the more viable route this route became.
So it became this self-perpetuating cycle and people started looking to Latin America also as an alternative to the routes to Europe. For example, which had also legal pathways, had started to be closed down there. So looking at all these things together, it actually really set the stage for them. What we saw was truly an explosion in these numbers after the pandemic, the sort of border restrictions lifted.
So 20, 21 onward, that's when we've really seen the most significant. But the ground work, the factors that were contributing to this change, they actually started many years, many years earlier, even though from 2021 that was more than the previous decade in terms of this more international migration, 2022 was even more significant than that, 2023 and so on.
So long winded way of saying mid mid 2010 is when we started to see more significant numbers and internationalization of this migration and no let up inside. I mean, as we sit here, there are millions of people potentially on the move in Lebanon going it's things being so bad that they're actually heading to Syria of all places, that's considered a safer place to be.
So about this geography, you know, the route, the Darien Gap that you mentioned as part of it connecting Panama and Colombia for people who don't know about that. But give us a little background, a piece in The Atlantic referred to it as 70 miles in hell, and it was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands use that route.
Right. So the danger becomes a really good barometer for this migration, because if you just look at the geography of the Western Hemisphere, you have South America literally comes into a bottleneck, into a funnel, this very slender piece of land where Colombia comes into comes into Panama. In that area there is it's referred to the Darian, the Darian Jungle, and it's called the Gap because it's the only gap in the Pan-American Highway that goes all the way from Tierra del Fuego to the tip of South America, all the way up to the Bay of Alaska.
It's such a rugged section of terrain that it has literally defied human civilization there, entire civilizations that develop independently, diseases that couldn't pass through, much less were they able to construct a road. You know, it's one of the rainiest, densest tracks of land on the planet. And so migrants are forced to walk. But what that also means, A, to walk to in order to pass through it when migrants are on their way from South America North and ultimately to the US-Mexico border.
So what that means is a daring gap becomes a very good barometer for this migration because essentially everyone is forced to pass through in addition to the fact that Panama, who's on the other end of the sort of receiving end of the of the daring gap, they really are the only country along the way that sort of has any regularization of this migration insofar as migrants will actually enter the camps that are there.
There's a series of camps they pass through and they will register. And so there's really good data there. It becomes a good barometer for who is coming ultimately to the US-Mexico border, because 99.99% of people who are passing through during Gap are making their way there. So I've crossed the dugout myself. I've actually followed for the book. It's immersive reporting and investigative reporting is the is the strategy.
So I followed groups of migrants and I crossed in 2022, in addition to doing a lot of research in the region, on both sides, on both sides of the route, so that that experience of 70 miles in hell is one that I'm very familiar with. But it felt very important to me after interviewing hundreds of people who've made this journey to try and come as close to understanding that experience as as I could, and pick up your reporter hat and describe what that experience was like.
Just as a human being, it's very difficult to describe. At the time that I was crossing in 2022, the numbers were quite high. They were also quite high. In 2023, they remain quite high. So 20, 20, 2021, for example, you 120,000 people who cross through the Darian Gap, which is more than the previous decade combined. 2023 Excuse me, you have 250,000 people.
Excuse me. I'm sorry, 20, 20, 2021 is 120,000, 2022 is 250,000, 2023 is 520,000. And this year they believe is on pace to about match that 500,000 number. So if you just think of the sheer number of people I crossed with a group of roughly 600 and that was only one group out of about 4000 who crossed that day alone in 2022.
So a massive group of people, the vast majority were from Venezuela, but women, children, very small children, elderly people, multiple generations. You'll have grandparents, parents, kids who are passing through. We're talking about mud up to your knees. I mean, such such mud that you have to lift your own legs out and it will suck the shoes off your feet.
You're crossing rivers over and over and over. How long how long does it take to make the journey? Well, so that's a good question. If you if you're able to if you don't get hurt, if you don't get sick, if you don't get robbed or assaulted on your way through the gap or any number of things that can happen to you, there are two main routes still, one from propaganda and the other is from my country.
These are two towns, cities, really towns in the Darien region. On the Colombian side, one is slightly shorter than the other, but there are also these VIP routes. But those are the two VIP, meaning you could pay more money. You can sort of skip part of the route to these to the smugglers. When we cross through, just for example, and we went relatively fast, although we took a wrong turn.
So we were there five nights, six days. I believe most people can cross through the eye candy route and for sort of 4 to 7 days copper, Ghana has tended to be slightly longer, you know, somewhere between six and eight days. So we're talking about one of the most physically arduous experiences that I've ever had, but certainly one of the most even more than that emotionally, psychologically difficult experiences and not as someone with a lot of privilege and my American passport in my back pocket and my journalist hat.
So you can imagine what it is for people who have far fewer resources and really information. I'm fascinated by this. So I got I have another question for you about the details. So I'm guessing most of the people making this journey aren't heading to their closest outdoor store and buying all their gear. Right. And tents and all mosquito nets, whatever you need.
People where people just sleeping on the ground in the open. Well, you know what's remarkable about this journey is it's, well, a way to articulate it is the fewer legal pathways there are, the more dangerous irregular routes people will take. And they're sort of forced into the arms of smugglers, smugglers who have varying degrees of connection or sort of command and control with criminal organizations.
The daring gap, this part of the route, which as I mentioned, is only one section of the route for people who are passing through potentially two dozen countries in order to make it to the United States is controlled by clan. They'll go. So a cartel, essentially a paramilitary group on an on a Colombian side. And people paid. When I was crossing, people were paying 250, $300 in order to cross to have a guide and security in order to pass through.
So it can be remarkably organized. I mean, this is a this is a business. And so in addition to that, to answer your question, all of these little micro economies have popped up around this really big business of moving human beings on this black market to claim asylum in the United States. So you'll have the rubber boots lady who's waiting very conveniently by the boat that you take to cross the Gulf of Araba in order to enter the jungle.
And these rubber boots, you really do need them to cross the jungle and you'll have someone selling little stoves, little camping stoves, you'll have someone selling tents that you can carry with you. So all these micro economies have developed in addition to the fact that there's a really just powerful word of mouth that happens. Yes. On on social media platforms such as Tik Tok.
But you'll also have WhatsApp groups of, you know, 500 people, a thousand people from one particular region in one particular country, sometimes as specific as a town or a city. And they're passing information back and forth. Sometimes you have smugglers who infiltrate those groups and then kind of promote their services. This sort of Yelp review for smugglers, if you will.
So there are various degrees to which people are equipped and informed when they make this journey. But of course, it's extremely, extremely, extremely difficult and extreme conditions. And so, yeah, you have people sort of sleeping in the mud and you get so tired even by the second day that people will ditch everything they have. So maybe they bought those boots and that tent and they tried to carry gear and food and water, but they're already so exhausted by day two that they've just thrown it all away to just just try and survive and make it through.
So you talk about the drivers of this migration in your title and beyond acute circumstances like an election in Venezuela or natural disaster or war, there are these chronic reasons that this has been going on for a long time. You just talked about essentially the black market and you've described the indomitable resilience part of the title. What about that American policy, part of the title?
How does that fit in to this issue? Well, I think is the main driver to some extent of this of this migration in that, as I mentioned, it's not a particularly unique observation or analysis, but when you close down legal pathways, people will take irregular pathways to reach the wealthiest country on Earth and the American dream and people who have made this journey.
And again, I've interviewed hundreds from from every country on earth, they really do believe in that idea so fervently. It is unshakable that their lives will be better or their children's lives will be better. I mean, that in and of itself is a huge magnet. But in terms of U.S. policy in the region in particular, the United States has defined and under Republican and Democratic administrations, I mean, really over the past 30, 40 years has almost completely defined its relationship with Latin America by migration alone and by will you help us stop these migrants from reaching U.S. borders?
So really, the U.S. policy, bipartisan policy has been let's push the US-Mexico border as far out as possible. So the US border becomes Mexico's southern border becomes Guatemala's southern border, and you have U.S. enforcement, U.S. immigration policies essentially being implemented as far south as Brazil. But the analysis remains that if you close off those legal pathways, people will take irregular pathways, they will utilize smugglers in order to try and make it to their destination, which is overwhelmingly the United States.
So that's what I'm referring to, is is this bipartisan policy really since the nineties, this idea of prevention through deterrence, if we make it as difficult as possible, people will not come. While the generation gap is a pretty good it's a pretty good example of how maybe that policy could use another look. If you have, you know, half a million people routinely making this journey, if you've seen what I have seen in the Darian Gap on this journey, spoken to people about why they come, what they're willing to brave, I mean, they're willing to die essentially for the chance that they might make it to the United States.
It's very difficult to think of a policy that the U.S. could conceive of that could stop people who are willing to die in order to make it. And if the goal is to stop people from coming in, we simply look at the last few years alone. I think that that's a fairly good demonstration of how potentially prevention, through deterrence, the deterrent clearly is not quite is not quite being effective.
So bottom line here, what you're saying is unless the U.S. finally gets serious about immigration reform and updating its policies, which has been long talked about but stalled in Congress for the longest time, that there's no other way for this to be fixed. If you think of it in terms of fixing a problem, I would go even further than that, to be honest.
Obviously, immigration reform is necessary. The United States is at the receiving end of this. If you have mass global displacement, if you have push and pull factors in all of these countries that are not just transit countries, but also increasingly countries of origin, the U.S., U.S. policy is incredibly limited in what it can actually achieve unless essentially you make the entire world the U.S. border, which would be very difficult, which would be very difficult to do.
So, yes, of course, immigration reform, the immigration system is broken. I mean, asylum itself as a definition. Refugee categories were created in the wake of World War Two. We live in a very different world now. But I think what this migration shows is not just how badly broken the U.S. immigration system is and how outdated and and unable it is to adapt to a very changed world and rapidly changing world.
But it is actually how limited U.S. policymakers and U.S. leaders are in their ability to to impact this migration. I think the reality is that we live we now live on a refugee, on a refugee planet, and that severely limits as influential and as much leverage as the United States has as much power in the world. It is quite limiting for the effectiveness of U.S. policy.
I think of, you know, the famous Michael Crichton adage from Jurassic Park Life finds a way. So the policy is one thing. Power is another. But when people are in need and we haven't really even talked about climate refugees when you talk about all of this phenomena. So I don't know if you had a chance to look at this yet, but the voice of America had a report this week saying migrant crossings through the Darién gap are down 35% so far in 2024.
But any hint as to why we've seen this decrease? Well, also, I think the September the Panamanians just announced the September numbers, which are up slightly and so we do try we become quite obsessed with these numbers as we try to sort of read the tea leaves. Right. You know, but it has undeniably been in an upward trend over the over the at least since 2021.
And it actually has really been on an upward trend since 2016 with some blips that were some when we look backward, look like aberrations, which is 2017 was the first year of the Trump administration, which is sort of a wait and see period. And then, of course, 2020, which is unprecedented in terms of the world shutting down for the pandemic.
So, you know, I do think that there to some extent, we are seeing a reflection of a new Panamanian administration that has said that they want to shut the dairying up, which is literally impossible. I hate to overuse the word literally. It's an impossible thing to do. But the pain point this Panamanian administration has shown more of an appetite and more of an interest on the United States has been happy to provide the funding in terms of actually detaining and removing people themselves, which the argument from the Panamanians has always been, that they don't have the capacity to do that.
To some extent. I think that is what's going on. To some extent, I think that people are very closely looking at what's happening in Mexico. I think this is actually the most significant factor, which is periodically what happens is people build up. The U.S. says, hey, Mexico, can you help us out here? Mexico just sort of moves people around or shoves them back to Guatemala, which one might argue is illegal based on Mexican law and international humanitarian law, Mexico sort of moves them around so there's less pressure on the US-Mexico border or literally busses them from the north of Mexico to the south of Mexico or sends them back.
And then that sort of practice will continue until the pressure builds up again. And so I guess that's what I'm saying is when we look when we look at these numbers, there does tend to be a sort of wait and see period when there's a certain policy change. But then almost inevitably the numbers return. Fundamentals haven't changed. It's just been flow.
Right, Right. So I'm wondering, you know, you've been on this beat for a long time, and as you said a long time ago, you realize it's too big for an article or a long form piece. It has to be a book. But I'm wondering in the process of researching this, thinking about this, immersing yourself in it, what have you learned that we need to know that isn't part of the general reporting on the movement of people or the U.S. southern border?
What are some of the factors, large and small, that come to mind in that regard? Things that are very important, perhaps supremely important, but just aren't part of the story on a daily basis, right? I mean, there's been a lot of focus on the Darian Gap, which I think is is important. I mean, it's also it's it's so incredibly dramatic.
And just in terms of, you know, human toll, it's unlike anything I've ever witnessed. And so I understand that. But we tend to focus on people in the Darian Gap and we ignore them before and we ignore them afterwards, and then we might pay attention again when they're at the US-Mexico border and then they disappear again, either in the United States or once they're back in Mexico.
So I think it's really important. How can we possibly devise a policy that is effective if we're not seeing the Darian Gap and the US-Mexico border as part of this global migration, as part of this continuum? We I think that really needs to be understood in order for the policy responses to be effective. I mean, our U.S. immigration system in particular on the enforcement side, but overall is still geared towards single adult Mexican males.
It's still a sort of eighties nineties mindset, and that hasn't been the primary demographic arriving at the US-Mexico border for 30, 40 years. So of course, it's not going to be effective, much less reflect the fact that we have women, unaccompanied minors, families who are coming from all over the world. I mean, since 2019 you've had more people come from outside of central America and Mexico to the US-Mexico border than some within that region.
And yet we're still we still are mostly having a political conversation, in particular, but even a policy conversation that doesn't really take that incredible shift into account. And, you know, we're also talking about a massive, massive, massive business on I focus in particular on people who are coming from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who do tend to pay more and have far more complex journeys.
But we're talking about on the conservative end, even if you're coming from within South America, Venezuelans as well, some Central Americans now pay $10,000 a head. So if you look at last year alone for the Darian Gap, 520,000 people cross $10,000 a head. That is $5 billion in one year and in illicit profit. So it doesn't just go to organized criminal groups, but also goes to the corrupt officials in all of these transit countries who very much make this thing work.
And they're happy to take money from the U.S. to try and stop migrants. They're happy to take money directly from the migrants themselves, which I've witnessed countless times. And then they also take money from the smugglers and the organized criminal groups to sort of look the other way that further fuels instability, corruption, the undermining of institutions in the transit countries.
And then they themselves are increasingly becoming origin countries for this migration. So it's simply fueling this migration. So I think it can't be understated how sophisticated these smuggling networks are, but what a role, what kind of a role official corruption plays. And I think that's part of the danger of the emphasis of the United States really in sort of having a a singular relationship with many countries throughout the region, which is okay if you play ball on migration and help us stop migrants, then we're going to look the other way for other things that you that you might be doing.
So I think it underscores the danger of that and just the fact that really people are coming from all over the world. What we have here is people were, in a way sort of voting with their feet and that can't be ignored. And to and to do so is at our own peril. And it's sort of with our heads in the sand and it's what you describe.
It's like the whole world has moved on to smartphones with AI and U.S. policy is still the BlackBerry or something like that. Exactly. So about writing the book at the Wilson Center, has this been a good experience for you to be able to shut your door? And other than when we bug you to do an interview like this and actually focus on your book?
No, no, it's been it's been absolutely wonderful. I am forever, forever, forever in in debt to the Wilson Center. I mean, simply having this space, a physical space, that's not my one bedroom apartment then has been miraculous. I know. But being a part of this institution with these incredible thinkers, I mean, I get to pick the brains of everyone at RAF D and the Mexico Institute.
But even beyond that, because really this theme, this book touches almost every part of the world. And so for me to be able to be surrounded by these colleagues and to sort of dip into some of these incredible events that are going on almost daily here and then when need be, of course, sort of shelter in my in my office and get some writing done.
It's been absolutely invaluable to have that time and that space. And as a journalist, I'm really, really grateful for the opportunity to be able to sort of step away from the sort of 24/7 news cycle. Obviously, we're in the coming down to the wire on a very important election here. And I suppose there's a part of me that misses the adrenaline and being in a newsroom for that.
But the opportunity to have the time and space to really engage deeply on policy issues that that I believe will have a they're having a huge impact already, but that will have a huge import on on our future and in really who we are as a country to have the time and space to do that is an incredible thing and a rare thing and a precious thing in journalism and in journalism today.
So I'm incredibly grateful for that. Well, I don't want to induce any deadline PTSD, but as what's the publication schedule for the book? When can we expect We don't have a firm date, but the goal is by the end of 2025. So that's sort of what we are. That was sort of our goal from the from the outset, because it's not a political book, it's not an election book.
And the hope is that it will be something sort of more timeless, more more universal, because as we've talked about, I don't believe that this we're not going backward. You know, the shift is not it's not going to reverse itself. And so hopefully it will sort of tap into something, something larger. And I should say hopefully we'll also be so hopefully we'll also be good to read.
You'll solo sort of for well, right now there's six, which is too many, but you'll follow a handful of of people from all different countries from all over the world who I met and followed along the route. And you'll follow their their journey and and so hopefully it's also just a hell of a good read also. Well, looking forward to it.
Molly, great to have you at the center. Thanks for joining us for this discussion today. Thanks for having me. Our guest is Molly O'Toole. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Wilson Center now and that you'll join us again soon. Until then, for all of us at the center, I'm John Milewski. Thanks for your time and interest.
