Biden and Trump visiting US-Mexico border as immigration dominates election

Over the course of five reporting trips at the border since the beginning of the Biden administration, I’ve spoken to dozens of migrants from across the world – but the greatest number has been, by far, from Venezuela. The country has been facing an economic and political crisis as well as high levels of crime, driving millions of its citizens to flee.

Last year, for example, I met a group of young men who described their voyage north through the Darien Gap, a lawless and inhospitable stretch of jungle that separates Colombia and Panama.

Their experiences are typical of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have come to the US in recent years.

“It felt as if everything in that jungle can kill you,” one of them, a 30-year-old named Carlos told me. “If you get sick or get bitten by something, that’s it. You’re dead and you’ll lay there forever.”

Another Venezuelan – who asked me to not give his name – described running into armed men with machetes and guns while in a particularly hostile stretch of the jungle on the Colombian side of the border.

When he got to Panama, he was in for a surprise: he found out his wife, who was travelling with him, was two months pregnant. “That makes me really happy,” he said. “But it made me very, very nervous for the rest of the trip up to the border.”