(5 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Villa Caleta, Panama – 7 April 2025
1. Aerial of Villa Caleta next to Tuquesa River ++ MUTE ++
2. Children walking down road
3. Militza Olea’s 3-year-old nephew in the arms of a relative
4. Close of rashes on baby’s body
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Militza Olea, Villa Caleta resident:
"We don’t bathe there (in the Turquesa River) anymore. When you bathe there, you get itchy rashes. And for the children, it’s even more dangerous for them. Why? Because the water is polluted. There is a lot of garbage."
6. Dog lying by hammock in room
7. Olea laughing
8. Baby with rashes, seen from behind
9. Village
10. Man looking through window
11. Community leader Cholino de Gracia, UPSOUND (Spanish): "Migration brings a lot of positives and negatives."
12. Close of de Gracia, UPSOUND (Spanish): "The serious thing is, I can say it (river pollution) has affected our nutrition."
13. Pan from construction to jungle
14. Dog lying on life vests, next to boat engines and drums of fuel
15. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Cholino de Gracia, community leader:
"Culturally, fishing is our way of life. And now when we go fishing we are practically eating fish full of gasoline and that affects our health."
16. Aerial of village ++ MUTE ++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Darien National Park, Panama – 5 April 2025
17. Panama’s Environmental Minister Juan Carlos Navarro looking through binoculars during boat ride
18. Birds on tree
19. Sambu River
20. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Juan Carlos Navarro, Environment Minister of Panama:
"Because when those undocumented (migrants) passed through the Darien Gap, they destroyed our forest and polluted our rivers, and even polluted them with the corpses of people who died along the way."
21. Navarro and team during boat ride
22. Jungle by river
23. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Juan Carlos Navarro, Environment Minister of Panama:
"Well, the current U.S. administration could say, ‘It’s not our trash — it belongs to the illegals.’ But then, who pays Panama? We are alone struggling against illegal migration without money and with the few resources we have, with so much need in Panama, this is not fair and it’s not right. Those responsible should pay. If the United States is responsible because it opened its borders, then the United States should pay for it."
24. Aerial of river ++ MUTE ++
STORYLINE:
Red sores dotted the skin of Militza Olea’s 3-year-old nephew days after he bathed in a jungle river that hundreds of thousands of migrants once traversed on their way to the United States.
For centuries, Indigenous Embera people have fished and bathed in the Turquesa river that flows out of the Darien Gap, a remote area that once sat largely untouched along the Colombia-Panama border.
Then beginning in 2021, the region became the epicenter of an unprecedented migratory crisis, with 1.2 million vulnerable people trekking through one of the most biodiverse rainforests on earth.
While that flow of people has virtually vanished, the region has been left grappling with unanticipated environmental consequences.
"The water is polluted, there is a lot of garbage" in the river, Olea, 43, said. "We don’t bathe there anymore."
She said that now people break out in hives after being in the water.
It’s unclear what the specific cause of the skin irritation is, but the environmental impacts from the migration have been wide ranging.
Panamanian environmental authorities say trash, fecal matter and migrant bodies are among the river’s contaminants.
AP Video by Matias Delacroix
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