Record migrant crossings along Darién jungle are creating an "unsustainable crisis," Colombian ambassador says

Washington — The unprecedented flow of tens of thousands of U.S.-bound migrants crossing Panama's treacherous Darién Gap jungle is "an unsustainable crisis," Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. told CBS News on Friday.

In September alone, more than 75,000 migrants crossed the roadless Darién jungle on foot, the second-highest monthly tally recorded by Panamanian officials, only a few thousand less than the 82,000 crossings reported in August. In total, more than 400,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelans headed to the U.S., have crossed that jungle this year to enter Central America, a record and once unimaginable number.

The flow of migration along the largely ungoverned Panama-Colombia border has fueled unprecedented levels of Venezuelan arrivals along the U.S. southern border, where American officials processed roughly 50,000 Venezuelan migrants in September alone, an all-time high.