MIGRANTS:...Stopping Them In Panama...U.S. To Spend $10 Million In New Effort...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | It's a good idea and something of a new approach to the ongoing migrant problem. Stop them way before they hit the U.S. - Mexico border. The plan by the Biden Administration just may work.

Or, at the very least, help.

This from axios.com: [ The unprecedented pilot program has been blocked by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) for months, but that has ended now that Menendez has ceded the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after being indicted on bribery charges.

The rapid action on a controversial plan is another indication of the administration's desperation to slow the number of people arriving at the border.

The Biden administration plans to notify Congress that it intends to spend up to $10 million in foreign aid on a pilot program to help Panama deport more migrants who do not qualify for protections, sources directly familiar tell Axios. Most of the immigrants cross into Panama by way of the Darian Gap in jungle country that connects Colombia and Panama. 

It would be a six-month pilot program, involving the State Department and Department of Homeland Security. The funds would initially be used to target single, adult males.

The pilot could launch as early as mid-October.

Panama has been asking the U.S. for this kind of help, according to internal planning documents viewed by Axios. ]

Mid-October is two weeks away. But something tells us the U.S. will begin to see results as early as the first week of November.

Mexico earlier had halted train operations that saw migrants climb aboard and hitch rides all the way to the country's northern border.

We'll follow this story and see how it goes...

-30-