Ayub Ibrahim had just emerged from the jungle. His feet still hurt. A month earlier, he had left his home in Somalia, fleeing a civil war, he said, traveling first to Turkey, then to Brazil and finally crossing on foot a 106km stretch of jungle known as the Darién Strait.
Resting in the stuffy San Vicente migrant camp in Panama with hundreds of other new arrivals, he suddenly found himself surrounded by half a dozen Americans with video cameras. “Do you like Ilhan Omar? [deputada democrata]?” asked one person. “What do you think of Joe Biden?”
Ibrahim, 20, answered questions. He said he admired Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American elected to Congress. He doesn’t follow American politics, he added, but he thinks Joe Biden is a good president. When asked whether Biden or former President Donald Trump would be better for immigrants, he chose Biden.
Ibrahim would later say that he felt surprised and confused by the questions. He had no intention of making a political statement. But it was already too late.
One of his interviewers, Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist and former Republican candidate for Congress, had previously posted an edited video of the conversation. It spread across the internet, racking up nearly two million views on X. The caption read: “Illegal Somali immigrants declare support for Ilhan Omar and Joe Biden inside migrant camp in Panama.”
As immigration becomes a dominant issue in the 2024 presidential race, right-wing media has been awash in often misleading videos of migrants emerging from the Darién Strait, a stretch without jungle roads Panama that became a bottleneck for thousands of people on their way to the United States.
Out there
The videos are presented as evidence of what Republicans often describe as an “invasion” by Muslim terrorists, Chinese spies and Latin American criminals. Widely posted on social media, the videos blame President Biden for the migration and falsely suggest that Democrats are encouraging it to create new illegal voters. Humanitarian aid organizations are portrayed as profiteers who profit from human misery.
The New York Times traced much of this content to the work of Michael Yon, a former Green Beret [que serviu nas Forças Especiais americanas] which over the past three years has become the preferred tour guide for right-wing journalists, politicians and influencers who want to see the Darién Strait in person.
These travelers included, along with Laura Loomer, Republican congressmen Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Burgess Owens of Utah, reporters, producers and podcast hosts for The Epoch Times, a right-wing newspaper, and correspondents for Real America’s Voice, the digital media company that hosts the podcast of Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor and global ultra-right strategist.
Videos and other content made by them began to serve as a type of supporting material accompanying conversations about immigration on the conservative Fox News channel, on Tucker Carlson’s online program and even for Trump’s speeches.
On Friday, the Republican presidential candidate reposted a video on Truth Social made by Laura Loomer. It included several excerpts from her trip to Panama, including one of her conversation with Ibrahim.
The Times followed a group as they visited camps on the edge of the Darién Strait, observing and recording as participants filmed and interviewed migrants. Reporters, producers and influencers approached migrants from Africa, China and the Middle East, bombarding them with politically charged questions.
Their posts amplified allegedly compromising moments from the interviews that reinforced their perceptions, while ignoring responses that appeared to challenge their ideas.
When asked if he had received money from the United Nations or humanitarian groups, Ibrahim said no. He has also stated that, as a Muslim, he supports equal rights for women and is against discrimination against gay people. These parts of the interview were cut from the version published online and are not in Loomer’s later accounts.
In a radio show interview on the far-right conspiracist platform Infowars, Loomer questioned whether the Muslims he encountered, including Ibrahim, were “jihadists or people with jihadist tendencies.”
The next day, aboard a bus bound for Costa Rica, Ibrahim said he regretted the experience. “She wanted to give a bad image about immigrants to the world. Her questions weren’t fair,” she said of Loomer.
Clips of migrants in Panama have become weapons in the information battle waged over immigration, experts say. The content, repeated several times online, is highly effective, especially in creating the perception that there is a threat of violence from these groups, says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a political science professor at George Mason University who has studied the impact of social media. in immigration.
The images, according to her, tend to focus on young men, excluding women and children, who could generate more empathetic responses. Migrants are often called “military-age men” and “invaders,” and their claims of political or religious persecution in their home countries are often dismissed as rehearsed false stories.
Influencers and media figures on the tours argue they are shining a light on a crisis that traditional media outlets downplay or refuse to cover. Laura Loomer described herself as a journalist. “My reporting was very powerful,” she says.
The focus on Muslim and Chinese migrants can create a distorted impression. Approximately 90% of the 520,000 people who crossed the Darién Strait last year were South Americans and Caribbeans, according to the Panamanian government. The vast majority of this group comes from Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti, countries facing economic and political crisis.
The number of migrants from Africa, China and the Middle East crossing the strait has increased in the last two years, but represents less than 8% of the total. Panama screens migrants from these regions for possible criminal or terrorist connections.
So far, the terrorism threat they could pose is only theoretical. Several studies have found no correlation between immigration and acts of terror, according to a review by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published last year.
Critics warn that sensationalist coverage of complex issues like this only serves to worsen the humanitarian crisis. “The misrepresentation of migrants crossing the strait as invaders or illegals puts their lives at risk,” says Sandie Blanchet, UNICEF representative in Panama. “This may justify harsh treatment and even violence against them.”
Yon and his tours often take aim at humanitarian organizations working in the region, reserving particular disdain for one UN agency — the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The groups, they say, encourage migration by providing health care, psychological support and nutrition both before and after migrants make the journey.
This aid is paid for by government contributions and private donations, funds that Yon calls “profits” that motivate organizations to encourage more migration.
Diego Beltran, acting director for Central, North America and the Caribbean at the migration organization, disputes the characterization, noting that the UN does not profit from its activities and that it works to find alternatives to migration. The agency has helped more than 4 million migrants legally settle in South America instead of moving to the U.S., he said.
“There is a lot of misinformation in this area,” says Beltran. “It is clear that migration is increasingly a political issue in many countries. But we do not agree with efforts to stigmatize migrants and increase xenophobia.”
Another target is Hias, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a U.S. nonprofit that provides services, including legal assistance and mental health, to migrants. The tours organized by Yon question the large maps of the region that the organization displays in some of its facilities in Panama, accusing it of encouraging people to take the migratory route.
Hias officials say the maps, which do not detail specific routes through Darién, are intended to help migrants find aid stations. “We certainly don’t encourage migration,” says Mark Hetfield, the organization’s president. “Everything we’re offering is a way to help those who get there.”
Hetfield says much of the criticism of his group is rooted in anti-Semitism, saying the man who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 frequently posted diatribes about the group.
Yon also claims, without evidence, that the group helps dangerous migrants enter the US. “They will shout ‘Allahu akbar [Deus é maior] and they’re going to shoot,” he said, using an expletive, at an anti-immigration rally in February near Eagle Pass, Texas. “They’re crossing the border and it’s being financed with Jewish money.”
Yon has established close ties with the Panamanian government, and especially its border patrol. His groups are often given unfettered access to migrant facilities, while traditional journalists are often banned.
One key to this access is Oscar Ramirez, a Mexican activist and correspondent for Real America’s Voice, who since early last year has worked with Yon in Panama as an assistant and translator. With a military stance, he greets border officials with hugs at checkpoints and receives armed escorts on walks through the Darién Strait itself.
And while he is quick to criticize international groups, he calls the Border Patrol “angels of the jungle” in social media posts and news reports. At a recent security forum in Panama City, Maj. Nelson Moreno, a border patrol protocol officer, described Ramirez as “an integral part of our border DNA.”
Two days earlier, a border guard prevented New York Times journalists from traveling to an indigenous village where Ramirez and Yon, along with approximately a dozen American influencers, were filming migrants.
Although there were no other witnesses to the episode, Loomer discussed it in an interview on Infowars the next day, saying that the agency considered the New York newspaper’s journalists a “security risk.”
Yon later stated that he had learned about the episode through contacts in the region. “You can’t take a step into the Darién Strait without me hearing about it,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.