May 1 (UPI) — As pro-Palestinian protests continue to affect college campuses throughout the United States, New York Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday said nearly 300 people were arrested the night before at Columbia University and City University of New York.

“While those who broke into the building did include students, they were led by people who were not affiliated with the university,” Adams said at a Wednesday morning press conference with the city’s police commissioner.

The post As pro-Palestine protests mount nationwide, so do arrests at N.Y. universities first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Halfway on their perilous journey to the United States, news reaches a Haitian mother and son near the Colombian border with Panama that American officials are deporting their newly arrived compatriots by the thousands.

But Benedictine and Roberth Point Du Jour are undeterred by the disturbing images of Haitian border-crossers being detained on arrival in Texas from Mexico.

“My goal is to get there and they cannot stop me,” said the mother, 42, who began the journey with her son on August 6 from Chile, where many Haitians found refuge after a devastating earthquake in 2010.

With economies struggling from the fallout of the coronavirus epidemic and travel restrictions being lifted, many are now making their way north through Central America with dreams of a better life in the United States.

The Point Du Jours find themselves stuck in the coastal town of Necocli in northwest Colombia with some 19,000 other undocumented migrants, mainly Haitians, trying to enter Panama.

Some have been stranded here for weeks, waiting for seats on boats that cross the Gulf of Uraba to Acandi on the Panama border.

There are only 250 boat tickets available every day.

From Acandi, they will start on foot — and armed with machetes, lanterns and tents — the dangerous trek of at least five days to Panama through the Darien jungle, battling snakes, steep ravines, swollen rivers, tropical downpours and criminals often linked to drug trafficking.

In a recent report, Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) said criminal gangs in the jungle prey on migrants, and assaults and rapes are common.

– Fear of drowning –

Still in Necocli, Roberth Point Du Jour on Thursday recounted his biggest fear: drowning on the 40-mile (60-kilometer) journey across the gulf.

“The second (fear) is that they will deport me,” he said, “because the thing I want most is to make something of myself in life.”

The US government came in for much criticism over images of mounted border patrol officers wielding long leather reins and confronting a slew of migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Many have been driven back, and some 1,400 others repatriated to Haiti on a series of flights.

“It’s a shame but my goal is… to get there, no matter what,” Benedictine insisted, stubbornly.

Waiting their turn, she and her son are renting accommodation in Necocli — a town of some 45,000 people — for $10 a night.

Many other migrants have no choice but to camp on the beach.

“It’s too late to go back now,” said Frank, a 38-year-old Haitian who also made the trip from Chile and withholds his family name for fear of reprisals from authorities along the way.

Six countries still separate him from the United States, where friends and family await.

Frank is travelling with five relatives including a baby of six months.

Under an agreement between the governments of Panama and Colombia, no more than 650 migrants are allowed to cross the border every day, contributing to the bottleneck.

Some 11,500 people have managed to buy tickets to make the boat trip to Acandi by October 13, and a further unknown number of people are trying to make the crossing on “illegal” vessels, according to Colombia’s human rights ombudsman Carlos Camargo.

– ‘Do not come’ –

All this despite US officials insisting in recent months that undocumented migrants will not be allowed entry.

“Do not come,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in June. “You will be turned back.”

But officials say there have been several thousand new arrivals at Necocli in recent weeks.

So far this year, an estimated 60,000 people have crossed the Colombia-Panama border — a key crossing for migrants fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries in search of a better life up north.

Many did not make it through the forest, according to their fellow travelers.

Those who make it to Panama, MSF said in a report last month, are generally held for processing and deportation.

Those with pending administrative or judicial processes — refugee applications, for example, or giving testimony against human traffickers — can be held at a migrant reception center for weeks or months.

“The centers are a source of complaints, as those who are held there face inadequate food and shelter, a lack of clean water and showers, and no means to communicate with their families,” MSF said.

Source: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210925-they-won-t-stop-me-haitians-stuck-in-colombia-keep-sights-on-us

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Updated at 4:25 p.m. ET

The Trump administration is designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism in a move that will return the island nation to the pariah list from which it was removed five years ago.

As he announced the designation Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Cuba of “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists.”

Pompeo also said the Trump administration is intent on “denying the Castro regime the resources it uses to oppress its people at home, and countering its malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez tweeted, “We condemn the hypocritical and cynical designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism announced by the US. The political opportunism of this action is recognized by anyone with an honest regard for the scourge of terrorism and its victims.”

The U.S. removed Cuba from its state sponsors of terrorism list in May 2015. President Barack Obama’s administration had reached an agreement to restore relations with Cuba months earlier, including a plan to boost travel and trade between the two countries.

“The world is upside down,” Cuban diplomat José Ramón Cabañas said late last week as news spread of the pending change. He noted that the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., came under an armed attack in April – an incident in which a Texas man was arrested on assault and weapons charges.

Sen. Patrick Leahy blasted the administration’s move, saying, “This blatantly politicized designation makes a mockery of what had been a credible, objective measure of a foreign government’s active support for terrorism.”

“Nothing remotely like that exists here,” the Democrat from Vermont said in a Monday statement, adding that the move will make U.S.-Cuba relations more difficult for the incoming Biden administration.

Being put on the U.S. terror list exposes countries to a suite of sanctions, including “restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual-use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions,” the U.S. State Department says.

The State Department currently lists only three countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Syria, Iran, and North Korea.

In a much-anticipated move, the U.S. formally took Sudan off the list last month as part of a deal in which the country agreed to normalize relations and open economic ties with Israel.

The Trump administration has steadily reversed many of the steps Obama took to end Cuba’s isolation. In the spring of 2019, it placed new sanctions and penalties on Cuba, hoping to undermine the communist regime. It also killed a deal that would have made it easier for Cuban baseball players to join professional teams in the U.S. and Canada.

Two months later, the United States imposed new travel restrictions to stop U.S. citizens from visiting the island on cruise ships and other travel.

And in May it returned Cuba to a list of countries that the U.S. deems as “not cooperating fully” with its counterterrorism efforts. It cited the country’s refusal of a request from Colombia to extradite leaders of the National Liberation Army and said Cuba has harbored “several U.S. fugitives from justice.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955641839/u-s-puts-cuba-back-on-list-of-state-sponsors-of-terrorism

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The post Armed conflict between Venezuela and Colombia is now a real, and terrifying, possibility first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Venezuelans are behind only Syrians in terms of asylum applications in Europe while those from Central Americans are up 4,000% in a decade.

In contrast to many congregations in western Europe, attendance is on the up at Notre-Dame aux Riches Claires, an imposing baroque red-brick church on a cobbled road close to Brussels’ Grand Place.

The faithful squeeze into the pews for Sunday mass and spill out on to the road to catch up before and after the weekly Spanish-language service by Father Óscar Escobar.

The 17th-century church’s change in fortunes is not just down to the strength of the Colombian priest’s sermons, or the healthy trade in community gossip and empanadas afterward.

It is on the frontline of a dash to Europe by Latin Americans, as growing numbers of migrants reject the mortal risks now inherent in trying to secure a new life in the USA.

The European Asylum Support Office reported this month that an 11% increase in people seeking political asylum in Europe since last year is being driven by people fleeing economic disasters, political repression and criminal violence in Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru.

Venezuelans have lodged some 18,400 asylum applications from January to May, roughly twice as many as during the same period in 2018, making them the nationality with the second-highest number of applications in Europe after Syrians.

Meanwhile, applications for refugee status by Central Americans have increased 4,000% compared with a decade ago.

The trend to head across the ocean to Europe is in part a reaction to the pitiless approach of Donald Trump’s White House, whose aggressive immigration policies have separated families at the border and drastically curtailed asylum and refugee resettlement.

The dangers of attempting to reach the US through Mexico were brought home by the photograph of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, who drowned trying to cross into Texas.

Many Latin American migrants are judging it better to buy a plane ticket and face the bureaucracy of the European immigration authorities rather than risk the cruelty of the people smugglers and the apparent indifference of the US administration.

Others describe a greater tolerance in Europe for Latin Americans who want to live out what was once called the American dream.

The Trump administration has refused to grant protected status to people fleeing Venezuela’s political and economic meltdown, but there is no visa requirement for Venezuelans coming to the EU’s Schengen area.

Spain remains the prime European destination for Latin Americans. Figures from the Spanish asylum and refugee office – part of the country’s interior ministry – show that asylum applications from Central America have more than tripled over the past two years as people flee violence, unemployment, corruption, crime and the impacts of climate change.

In 2017, 2,231 people from the region applied for asylum: 986 from Honduras; 31 from Nicaragua and 1,143 from El Salvador.

In just the first five months of 2019 alone, 7,442 people from Central America applied for asylum: 2,698 from Nicaragua, 2,666 from Honduras and 2,078 from El Salvador.

Julián, (not his real name), was driven out of his native El Salvador after being persecuted because of his sexual orientation. He tried to enter the US eight years ago and spent a year there trying to apply for asylum. When he failed to come up with the $25,000 bond needed, he was deported.

After moving back to a different city in his home country, he eventually decided to come to Spain where his siblings live.

Relatives and friends react at a crime scene after a man was killed, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Violence in Central America is a major driver of migration. Photograph: Edgard Garrido/Reuters

“I’m applying for asylum at the moment and will probably have to wait another eight months before I find out whether my application has been approved,” he said.

But each European immigration system is different. And Spain is not the easiest to traverse.

When confronted with long, difficult and unpredictable situations – such as the current crisis in Nicaragua – the Spanish authorities tend to adopt a watching brief, said Paloma Favieres, director of policy and campaigns at the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission (Cear).

Spain also has a hefty backlog and usually turns down asylum requests from those alleging persecution by the armed drug gangs known as maras – because the perpetrators are not state actors.

Belgium, in contrast, recognizes gang violence as a reason for granting refuge and is known for a comprehensive system of support for people in search of international protection.

Those applying for asylum receive housing, food, medical follow-up, legal assistance, help with learning one of the three official languages ​​of the country and the right to social support, said Susana Parraga, a social worker with Caritas International in Belgium.

“All European countries are supposed to offer these guarantees – taking into account European reception directives – but significant differences between countries still exist,” Parraga said.

Belgium is now third behind Spain and Italy as the most popular European country for Salvadorans.

They are in Belgium’s top 10 of the highest number of asylum applicants in 2019, with 343 applications. And of the 95 decisions made this year, 93 were positive.

In 2017, all Venezuelan requests for refugee status were recognized, dropping slightly to 86% in the period January to October 2018. Some 411 Venezuelans applied for refugee status in 2018, generally, in Parraga’s experience, individuals with a high level of education.

“The lack of knowledge of French or Dutch is an obstacle, although they learn quickly and the conditions of reception and the opportunity to quickly integrate into the labor market are very much appreciated by Venezuelans,” she said.

Luis, 29, from Maturín, in Aragua de Maturín, Venezuela, was granted refugee status in Belgium in February this year after leaving university in Caracas in the light of the kidnapping of his brother-in-law and the deteriorating economic situation.

“There is no hope for the future in Venezuela,” he said. “There are no jobs, no food. And it is dangerous. The most powerful reason I left was the homophobia, my life there was in danger.”

Luis, not his real name, lives in Flanders now and works in a call center, using his French, Spanish, Dutch and English. He can see a future. “America is completely full of Venezuelans,” he said. “So, people won’t find chances there. Belgium accepts people, it has its doors open to everybody. Here there are chances.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/10/latin-american-migrants-europe-belgium-spain-eu

The post As Trump closes US doors to migrants, Latin Americans look to Europe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

CARACAS – Venezuela’s socialist government said Wednesday it had derailed an attempted coup, claiming the United States, Colombia and Chile colluded in a military plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro and install a general and former defense minister in his place.

Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the plan involved active and retired army officers and was to have been executed between Sunday and Monday this past weekend.

“We were in all the meetings to plan the coup d’Etat. We were in all the conferences,” Rodriguez said, suggesting that government informers had infiltrated the alleged plotters during planning meetings.

He accused Colombia’s right-wing President Ivan Duque of “planning coups, assassinations of the president” as well as implicating Chile’s conservative President Sebastian Pinera and U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton in the plot.

At least six of the alleged plotters had been detained, the minister said in a televised speech in Caracas, presenting testimony from one of them, named as Lt. Carlos Saavedra.

Four of the officers were arrested last Friday, a move denounced by opposition leader Juan Guaido in a statement on Tuesday, though no details of the circumstances, or the reasons for their arrests, emerged.

Saavedra was identified as the nephew of retired Gen. Ramon Saavedra, who was arrested Wednesday by intelligence agents in Venezuela’s western Barinas state.

According to Rodriguez, surveillance of the plotters and Saavedra’s recorded confession revealed that the plan envisaged the takeover of three military bases, including the La Carlota air base in Caracas.

The plotters hoped to spring Raul Baduel — a former defense minister under the late President Hugo Chavez — from jail to proclaim him president, Rodriguez said.

“It is a military coup d’etat against Guaido or against President Nicolas Maduro?” Rodriguez joked.

Guaido is recognized as interim president by the United States and more than 50 other countries after the National Assembly leader said in January that Maduro’s re-election last year was illegitimate.

Venezuelan authorities recently announced that 17 people had been charged with attempting a coup on April 30, during Guaido’s failed attempt to inspire an uprising, when he called on the armed forces to rebel against Maduro.

The effort failed to shift the military’s allegiance and Guaido was backed by only around 30 military personnel. The revolt sputtered out after two days of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces.

Rodriguez accused Maduro’s former intelligence chief Cristopher Figuera — who has defected to the United States — of seeking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for supporting the abortive uprising.

Figuera “turned out to be a mercenary,” the minister said in Caracas.

In a series of shock claims made to media in the United States, Figuera said members of Maduro’s family and his government were engaged in money laundering and corruption and alleged that Hezbollah cells were allowed to operate in Venezuela and raise funds.

Washington has imposed a series of crippling sanctions on Maduro’s government, holding the president responsible for the collapse of the Latin American oil giant, which has seen millions flee the country amid widespread shortages of basic goods and medicines.

Russia, Maduro’s staunchest foreign backer along with Cuba and China, announced earlier Wednesday it was withdrawing military “technicians.”

It deployed the military personnel in Venezuela in a highly-publicized show of support for Maduro, who has been locked in a months-long power struggle with Guaido.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/27/world/venezuela-says-foiled-coup-plot-involving-u-s-colombia-chile/#.XRRKs4hKiUk

The post Venezuela says it foiled ‘coup’ plot involving U.S., Colombia and Chile first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

As the crisis in Venezuela continues to worsen, the U.S. military reports seeing more militia activity along the country’s eastern border with Colombia. The two main groups operating in the area are Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) and the notorious Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), both of which self-identify as Marxist. Both groups are currently on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations and have been fighting with the Colombian government for more than 50 years, according to one report from NBC.

With the situation in Venezuela becoming more fragile every day, increased illegal activity along the border only complicates matters further. As a result, the U.S. military has begun ramping up intelligence-gathering activities to monitor the groups. According to the head of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Admiral Craig Faller, the U.S. military is working with the Colombian government to share intelligence and information about what the groups are doing in the no man’s land between the two countries.

“Our principal role working with our Colombian partners is to assist in intelligence sharing,” said Faller while speaking to reporters from Reuters. “What we know, we share.”

According to Faller, both the ELN and the FARC have taken advantage of the crisis to bolster their ranks and gain a stronger foothold in Venezuela. With the closure of the border earlier this year, the rebel groups are now free to control a series of trails many Venezuelan refugees use to escape the country. According to Insight Crime, a watchdog group and think tank, rebel forces are extorting refugees for large sums of cash while battling each other and authorities for control. These trails, also called “trochas” by the locals, have been used for years to move weapons, drugs, and other contraband between the two states.

Further complicating the matter is the lack of response from both the Colombian and Venezuelan governments. Although Colombian President Ivan Duque hopes to modify a 2016 peace deal with the rebels that would effectively implement harsher punishments for rebel fighters, he needs the support of Colombian legislators to do so, according to Reuters. As for the Venezuelan military, many soldiers have long ago abandoned their posts and have fled the country. The ones remaining and still loyal to Nicolas Maduro are needed in populated areas to control unrest. The result is a modern Wild West that could make any attempt at a diplomatic solution in Venezuela much more difficult.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been critical of Maduro since the former took office, and the White House officially recognizes Juan Guiado as Venezuela’s legitimate ruler. So far, the Pentagon has reaffirmed that there are no plans in the works to deploy troops into Venezuela to remove Maduro by force. However, Faller also indicated that SOUTHCOM was prepared to deploy into the region if needed.

“My job is to be ready, be on the balls of my feet, at all times,” he said. “But we’ve been talking to our partners and no one, no one, thinks that a military option is a good idea.”

Source: https://thenewsrep.com/115605/with-venezuela-in-ruins-rebel-groups-seize-control-along-the-border/

The post With Venezuela in ruins, rebel groups seize control along the border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Venezuelans try to catch a ride at a Red Cross checkpoint [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

Pamplona, Colombia – Up to 50 Venezuelans sleep in what used to be 55-year-old Marta Duke’s dining room every night. Forty sleep in her former living room; more in what was once her son’s bedroom.

Scores more sleep at the neighbour’s house, and 200 more sleep outside in this chilly mountain town 75km from the Venezuelan border.

“In the new year, the quantity has exploded,” said Duke, rubbing her tired eyes in the kitchen of her house-turned-migrant shelter. “I’m worried.”

Aid workers and volunteers throughout the border zone agree that the number of Venezuelans hiking into Colombia has surged in recent weeks.

As the new arrivals continue to mount, the humanitarian crisis zone once confined to the Venezuelan border is pushing deeper into Colombia.

Marta Duke sits with women and children she shelters in her living room [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

‘No one expected this’

Late last year, places like Pamplona saw a steady trickle of Venezuelans walking through. Now, hundreds of people camp in the streets each night. The next day, they leave and more arrive.

READ MORE

On the border, Venezuelans leave notes at the ‘Wall of Laments’

“I don’t think anyone expected it to be like this,” said Eric Huxley, Colombia country director for the aid group Samaritan’s Purse, who has lived near the Venezuelan border since September.

No one knows exactly how Venezuelans are arriving. Figures from Colombia’s migration authority do not add up to the spike reported by shelters throughout the zone, suggesting more people are using routes between official ports of entry and arriving undocumented.

One shelter counted about 1,200 migrants passing through in one day this month, nearly twice what they counted weekly in early December. Duke also estimated that far more than 1,000 Venezuelans pass by her home each day, with almost 300 sleeping there each night.

Venezuelans sleep in Marta Duke’s home [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

Duke, a self-described social activist, opened her doors to the migrants one year ago, when she started to notice groups building fires to cook and camp at the entrance to Pamplona. Up to 10 people used to sleep in her house back then. Now, she runs her shelter full time while her husband works as an electrical repairman.

Every day she makes a soup with potatoes, rice, herbs and sometimes, bones.

“As long as God gives me the strength and energy to do this, I will,” she said, “It’s just sad to see so many people, children, hungry.”

Families flee

No one knows exactly why the numbers of arriving migrants have jumped in the New Year. Venezuelans seldom say it has much to do with the fresh political upheaval at home. Many countries including the United States have recognized opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the nation’s interim president, casting uncertainty on the future of the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who still enjoys the support of the highest ranks of Venezuela‘s military, Turkey, Russia and China.

READ MORE

Groups hope renewed focus on Venezuela will bring much-needed aid

The border area is set to become the next front line of the crisis, with the US reportedly planning to send food and medical supplies to Cucuta, the main Colombian-Venezuelan border crossing, where it will stay until it is allowed into the country. Maduro maintains that the US, along with other international powers, of trying to overthrow the country’s “legitimate government”.

Many migrants say they’re only marginally aware of the upheaval at home, as events are not covered by state TV broadcasters and the people remain more focused on daily survival.

Many say the spike in migration is related to the Christmas holiday. After an austere season of sentimental family time, many concluded they were ready to leave home behind.

Venezuelans walk, carrying the little belongings took from their homes when they fled [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

“We practically didn’t have a Christmas this year,” said Marena Castillo, lamenting the lack of their traditional dinner. “I couldn’t get my children anything. After that, I knew it was time to go.”

Also contributing to the spike: more migrants are bringing their families.

READ MORE

On Colombian border, fleeing Venezuelans have little hope

One of them is Eliomal Flores, who is making his second trip across Colombia. The first was in May of last year. He left behind his wife and two kids in Valencia to try and earn some money and find some stability before bringing them along.

He walked and hitchhiked alone to Bogota, where he paid about three dollars a night to sleep on a crowded floor with about 20 other Venezuelans. By day he sold candies on the street. After six months he was able to save about 100,000 Colombian pesos, about $32.

On December 18, he set out for home and spent some of what he had saved on Christmas for his children. Then, in early January, the family together locked up their house and walked away, unsure they would ever return.

Flores said he would save the money for emergency situations. So far, the family has been able to eat only donated food.

“The Colombians have been very generous with us,” he said.

More than three million people have fled Venezuela, and more than a million of them have settled in Colombia, a number which Colombian officials estimate could quadruple in the year to come.

Grassroots response

All along this part of the migration route, locals have taken it upon themselves to mount a grassroots humanitarian response.

READ MORE

Untreated diseases, health conditions plague Venezuelan migrants

One of them is Alonso Cardazo, 46, who farms peaches. Cardazo often drives his Toyota truck down the highway leading away from the border, stopping at each group of walking Venezuelans he found to distribute tamales, a typical Colombian food of rice and chicken cooked in a banana leaf.

He said he hands out between 30 and 40 tamales, which he buys at a shop in his local town, about three times a week. Typically it takes less than half an hour to distribute everything he has.

“I have no reason not to help them,” he said, sitting in his truck. “Just look. They need help.”

Douglas Cabeza stands in a loft he built to shelter Venezuelans [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

Others, like Duke in Pamplona, have opened their homes to migrants and refugees. Douglas Cabeza, 52, left his work as a shoe repairman three months ago to host Venezuelans full time.

When they outgrew his living room, he added a loft to his house. Now, he is building a set of shacks up the mountain from his home to shelter more people.

“Since about the third of January, a very strong flow has begun,” he said, standing in a loft surrounded by sleeping groups of women and children. “I don’t know how much longer this can last. So many people have left. How many more can remain?”

Truck drivers who pick up Venezuelans also provide some of the most crucial aid.

One hour in a car or truck can account for up to 15 hours on foot, said Victor Fernandez, coordinator for the Red Cross in Pamplona. Each day, he works at a small outpost set up for Venezuelans as they hike out of town and into the high mountains.

READ MORE

Venezuela in crisis: All the latest updates

“The flow of children has increased a lot,” he said, as many parents have returned to bring back their families.

Most are able to catch rides by this point, but still about 300 pass through the checkpoint each day. Fernandez said about 45 percent of them carry legal documentation, and only five percent have stamped passports, meaning they used official border crossings.

He gives an orientation to a small crowd, explaining to them where to stop their hikes to avoid nightfall catching the migrants in the highlands, where temperatures can near freezing. And he hands out maps of the route, showing 47 hours by foot to the next big city, Bucaramanga. The Ecuadorian border, where many were headed, lay about a 15-day walk ahead.

Algeni Garcia said his sandals fell apart on the four-day walk to Pamplona [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

Faced with this news, many Venezuelans opt to stay put and hope to catch a ride, but few trucks have space by this point.

Algeni Garcia, who recently left Venezuela with his wife and two children, rested in the gravel parking lot near the Red Cross checkpoint. Holding his one-year-old daughter, he studied the walking map, dismayed by what he learned in the recent orientation.

“Mom says we can’t walk,” his nine-year-old son told him.

“Go tell her we have to walk,” he said, frustration ringing in his voice. “There is no future here.”

The post As more Venezuelans flee, the crisis pushes deeper into Colombia first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.