In February 2024, far-right American activist and white nationalist Laura Loomer – whom former United States president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump once praised as “really very special” – descended upon Panama for a weeklong “investigative trip” to the Darién Gap to “report on the invasion of America” being staged thousands of kilometres south of the United States border.

The Darién Gap, of course, is the formidable stretch of roadless territory between Panama and Colombia that refuge seekers from around the world must navigate as they pursue a better life – pardon, as they seek to invade America. The Gap comprises a dense jungle where assault, rape and death are par for the course. And yet the US is somehow still the victim.

Loomer’s expedition brought her up close and personal with the enemy, including a number of “Venezuelan invaders”, some of whom told Loomer that Trump was a “bitch” and that they loved incumbent president Joe Biden. In other words, this was clearly war.

I recently encountered some Venezuelans of my own in Mexico, the final leg of the US invasion, where the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) continues to dutifully carry out the anti-migrant dirty work assigned to the country by its friendly gringo neighbours. Despite Biden’s reputation among the right wing as aiding and abetting the migrant conquest of the US, he has done a fine job of ensuring that the trans-Mexico trajectory remains as hellish as possible for refuge seekers – a situation that has only been exacerbated as presidential elections approach on both sides of the border. After all, repressing poor people usually scores you points.

When two young Venezuelan friends of mine – we’ll call them Juan Antonio and Claudia – crossed into the Mexican state of Chiapas from Guatemala in March, I was in the neighbouring state of Oaxaca and decided to do my part for the migrant conquest by renting a car and going to pick them up. This was easier said than done from the get-go, as my valid US driver’s licence was at my mother’s house in Washington, DC, and my mother was in Spain – a first-world travel problem if there ever was one.

While I despaired over how to proceed, Juan Antonio and Claudia were detained in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, which had seemingly been spontaneously converted into an open-air prison of sorts minus the complimentary food and water. Whereas asylum seekers were previously able to leave Ciudad Hidalgo with relative ease and proceed on their way, my friends were now informed that departing on their own would make them immediate prey for the cartels.

Instead, Mexican immigration personnel added them to an infinite list of passengers to be bussed to the city of Arriaga in eastern Chiapas, the stated price for which bus ranged between free and $100. Several scorching days and sleepless nights passed, an arrangement that was hardly ideal for two young people who had just emerged from a harrowing trek through the Darién jungle. Juan Antonio had been robbed and beaten, and women in the group had been raped.

It........

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