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Americas


CHASING CLICKS IN THE JUNGLE: RIGHT-WING INFLUENCERS DESCEND ON THE DARIÉN GAP

WLRN Public Media | By Ken Bensinger | The New York Times
Published March 25, 2024 at 3:20 PM EDT
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FEDERICO RIOS/NYT
/
NYTNS
Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist, interviews Ayub, a Somalian migrant who is
crossing the Darien Gap, at the Migrant Reception Center of San Vicente, Meteti,
Panama, on Feb. 17, 2024. The treacherous migrant crossing in Panama is drawing
packs of American activists who are distorting how immigration is perceived and
debated at home. (Federico Rios/The New York Times)

METITI, Panama — Ayub Ibrahim had just walked out of the jungle. His feet still
ached. A month earlier, he had left his home in Somalia, fleeing a civil war, he
said, traveling first to Turkey, then Brazil and finally crossing on foot
through a 66-mile expanse of wilderness known as the Darién Gap.

Resting in the sweltering San Vicente migrant camp in Panama with hundreds of
other recent arrivals, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a half-dozen
Americans with video cameras.

“Do you guys like Ilhan Omar?” one person asked. “What do you think about Joe
Biden?”

Ibrahim, 20, answered the questions. He said he liked and admired Omar, the
first Somali American to serve in Congress. He doesn’t follow U.S. politics, he
added, but thinks Biden is a good president. When asked if Biden or former
President Donald Trump would be better for immigrants, he chose Biden.

Later, Ibrahim would say he had felt ambushed and confused by the questions. He
hadn’t intended to make a political statement.

But by then, it was too late.

One of his questioners, Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist and former
Republican candidate for Congress, had already posted an edited video of the
conversation online. It had rocketed around the internet, amassing nearly 2
million views on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The caption read: “Somali illegal aliens proclaim support for Ilhan Omar and Joe
Biden inside Panama migrant camp!”

As immigration becomes a dominant issue in the 2024 presidential race,
right-wing media has been awash in gritty and often deceptive videos of migrants
emerging from the Darién Gap, a roadless stretch of Panamanian jungle that has
become a bottleneck for thousands of people on their way to the United States.

The clips are presented as proof of what Republicans often describe as an
“invasion” of Muslim terrorists, Chinese spies and Latin American criminals.
Posted widely on social media, the videos blame Biden for the migration and
suggest, falsely, that Democrats are encouraging it to create new, illegal
voters. International aid organizations are cast as profiteers making money off
human misery.

The New York Times traced much of that content to the work of Michael Yon, a
former Green Beret who over the past three years has become the go-to tour guide
for right-wing journalists, politicians and social-media influencers wanting to
see the Darién Gap firsthand.

Those travelers have included, along with Loomer, Republican Reps. 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 Steve Bannon’s podcast.

Videos and other content made by the visitors have come to serve as a kind of
B-roll footage accompanying conversations about immigration on Fox News, Tucker
Carlson’s online show and even for Trump himself.

On Friday, the Republican presidential candidate reposted a video on Truth
Social made by Loomer. It included several clips from her trip to Panama,
including a snippet of her conversation with Ibrahim.

The Times followed one group as it toured camps on the edge of the Darién Gap,
observing and recording as participants interviewed migrants and shot video. The
reporters, producers and influencers gravitated toward migrants from Africa,
China and the Middle East, barraging them with politically loaded questions.

Their posts amplified what they perceived as gotcha moments while dismissing
answers that appeared to challenge their preconceptions.

FEDERICO RIOS/NYT
/
NYTNS
Migrants at a store at the Migrant Reception Center of Lajas Blancas, Panama, on
Feb. 17, 2024. The treacherous migrant crossing in Panama is drawing packs of
American activists who are distorting how immigration is perceived and debated
at home. (Federico Rios/The New York Times)

When asked whether he had been given money by the United Nations or humanitarian
groups, Ibrahim said he had not. He also said that as a Muslim he supported
equal rights for women and was opposed to discrimination against gay people.
Those portions of the interview were cut from the version posted online and
missing from Loomer’s later accounts.

In an interview with a call-in talk show on Infowars, the far-right platform,
Loomer questioned whether the Muslims she encountered, including Ibrahim, were
“jihadists or people who have jihadist tendencies.”

Reached the next day on a bus bound for Costa Rica, Ibrahim said he regretted
the experience. “She wanted to give a bad picture about immigrants to the
world,” he said of Loomer. “Her questions weren’t fair.”

Clips of migrants in Panama have become weapons in the information battle being
waged over immigration, experts said. The content, looped again and again
online, is highly effective, particularly in creating the perception of the
threat of violence, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a political science professor
at George Mason University who has studied social media’s impact on immigration.

The images, she noted, tend to focus on young men while excluding women and
children, who might generate more sympathetic responses. The migrants are often
referred to as “military-aged men” and “invaders” and their claims of political
or religious persecution at home are often dismissed as scripted falsehoods.

“This is straight from the textbook for how you build a narrative,”
Correa-Cabrera said.

The influencers and media figures on the tours argue that they are shedding
light on a crisis that mainstream outlets either downplay or refuse to cover.
Loomer described herself as a journalist. “My reporting was so powerful,” she
said.

The focus on Muslim and Chinese migrants may create a distorted impression.
Roughly 90% of the 520,000 people who crossed through the Darién Gap last year
were South Americans and Caribbeans, according to the Panamanian government. The
vast majority of that group comes from Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti, countries
experiencing economic and political upheaval.

The number of migrants from Africa, China and the Middle East coming through the
Darién Gap has boomed in the past two years, but is less than 8% of the total.
Panama screens migrants from those regions for potential criminal or terrorist
connections. So far, the terrorism threat they might represent is theoretical.
Several academic studies have found no correlation between immigration and acts
of terror, a review by the Council on Foreign Relations published last fall
found.

Critics warn that inflammatory coverage of these complex problems only serves to
aggravate a humanitarian crisis.

“The misrepresentation of the migrants crossing the gap as invaders or illegals
puts their life at risk,” said Sandie Blanchet, UNICEF’s representative in
Panama. “It can justify harsh treatment and even violence against them.”



A Narrative takes hold

Yon and his tours often take aim at the humanitarian organizations at work in
the area, reserving particular ire for one U.N. agency — the International
Organization for Migration. The groups, they say, incentivize migration by
providing health care, psychological support and nutrition both before and after
migrants make the journey.

That aid is paid for by government contributions and private donations, funds
that Yon calls “profits” that motivate the organizations to encourage more
migration.

Diego Beltran, interim director for Central and North America and the Caribbean
for the migration organization, disputed the characterization, noting that the
U.N. doesn’t profit from its activities and that it works to find alternatives
to migration. The agency has helped more than 4 million migrants settle legally
in South America rather than move north to the U.S., he said.

“There is a great deal of disinformation in this area,” Beltran said. “It’s
clear that migration is increasingly a political issue in many countries. But we
don’t 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 aid and mental health, to
migrants. Yon’s tours have made an issue of the large maps of the region it
posts on some of its facilities in Panama, claiming they encourage people to
make the trek.

HIAS officials say the maps, which do not detail specific routes through the
gap, are meant to help migrants find aid stations.

“We certainly don’t encourage migration,” said Mark Hetfield, the HIAS
president. “All we’re offering is a way to assist those who arrive there.”

Hetfield said many of the criticisms of his group were grounded in antisemitism,
noting that the man who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 had
frequently posted rants about the group. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that
kill our people,” the killer posted online just hours before the attack.

Yon has also claimed, without evidence, that the group is helping dangerous
migrants enter the U.S. “They’re going to scream ‘Allahu akbar! And they’re
going to shoot” them, he said, using an obscenity, at an anti-immigration rally
last month near Eagle Pass, Texas. “And they’re coming across the border and
it’s being funded with Jewish money.”

There is some evidence that the narrative cultivated by Yon and others in his
groups is having an impact. This month, after influencers who visited the region
posted dozens of complaints online about maps hung by international groups, the
director of Panama’s National Migration Service raised a similar concern,
calling it “irresponsible.”

HIAS has since removed some of its maps in the region, saying it did so for
“security reasons.”

FEDERICO RIOS/NYT
/
NYTNS
Michael Yon, a former Green Beret who has become the go-to tour guide for
right-wing journalists, politicians, and social-media influencers in the Darién
Gap, left, with a cameraman, at the Migrant Reception Center of Lajas Blancas,
Panama, on Feb. 17, 2024. The treacherous migrant crossing in Panama is drawing
packs of American activists who are distorting how immigration is perceived and
debated at home.

‘Angels of the jungle’

Yon has forged close ties with the Panamanian government, and particularly its
border patrol. His groups have frequently received unrestricted access to
migrant facilities, while mainstream journalists are often prohibited.

A key to that 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
a fixer and translator. With a military bearing, he greets border officers with
hugs at checkpoints and receives armed escorts on treks through the Darién Gap
itself. And while he is quick to rail against 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 stopped Times journalists from traveling to an
Indigenous village where Ramirez and Yon, along with roughly 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 right-wing website founded by Jones, the following
day, saying the agency considered the Times journalists a “security risk.”

Yon later said he had learned about the episode from sources in the region. You
can’t make a move in the Darién Gap, he said in an interview with the Times,
“without me hearing about it.”

FEDERICO RIOS/NYT
/
NYTNS
Ann Vandersteel, a podcaster in Florida who has traveled with Michael Yon,
records an interview with Yazdan Faramehr, an Iranian migrant, at the San
Vicente Migrant Reception Center, Panama, on Feb. 17, 2024. The treacherous
migrant crossing in Panama is drawing packs of American activists who are
distorting how immigration is perceived and debated at home.

Constant content creation

Over 10 days, Loomer visited four migrant centers, navigated rivers in motorized
canoes, rode through the Panama Canal, and posted nearly 100 times on X about
the trip. One video has over 4.5 million views and was shared by Michael Flynn,
Trump’s former national security adviser.

“We are being invaded,” Loomer said in the clip, as she boarded a bus with
migrants. “We are being replaced and it’s no accident it’s happening in an
election year.”

In the crowded San Vicente camp, Yazdan Faramehr, 29, a bodybuilder from Iran
who speaks good English, was encircled by Americans clutching video cameras. As
they peppered him with questions, he told them he was hoping to get a fresh
start in Los Angeles’ large Persian community.

But Faramehr grew uncomfortable when Loomer, who once identified herself as a
“proud Islamophobe,” but now rejects the label, began asking about Iranians
coming the U.S. to “commit acts of Islamic terrorism.” Worried about drawing
unwanted attention or putting his family at risk, he asked that the group not
use his image.

Yon posted a clip on X anyway. It drew dozens of replies from people speculating
that Faramehr, who said he worked in human resources in Tehran, was a dangerous
intruder with a secret agenda.

Reached as he traveled north from Panama, Faramehr gave the Times permission to
use his photo. He said he thought it was fair of Yon’s tour to “criticize their
country’s immigration system” but felt like they were trying to trap him.

“To be honest,” he said, “I wish I never talked to them.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2024 The New York
Times


Tags
Americas AmericasimmigrationLatin America
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Ken Bensinger | The New York Times

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