On a bright afternoon, three dozen sunstruck migrants stepped off a speedboat on to the northern coast of South America, leaving behind their dreams of a new life in the US.
The remote Colombian beach town of Necoclí was once a launch pad for Venezuelans preparing to transit the treacherous Darién Gap on their way to the US. Since Donald Trump’s return to power, that flow has almost entirely disappeared, while hundreds of people now traipse home in the opposite direction each week.
Among them last week were teenage siblings Ana and Moisés Rincón, back in Necoclí after spending nearly $2,500 between them on transport, lodging and food to travel from Mexico through Central America to the northern tip of Colombia, still 1,600km from their home in Caracas. That was on top of $5,500 on their fruitless journey north.
At least 7.7mn of the siblings’ compatriots have fled poverty and repression in Venezuela since 2015, an exodus of almost a quarter of the population, many settling within the region.
“We were in Mexico for five months, spending the money our family sent us on surviving, but that couldn’t go on forever,” said Ana, aged 17, moments after disembarking on to a jetty sticking out from a sandy beach lined with palm trees.
The reverse flow of migrants in the sleepy seaside tourist town is a sign of how Trump’s border clampdown is radically shifting migration in Latin America, perhaps for the long term, along with the streams of both legitimate and illicit cash linked to the flow of people.
Their siblings’ perilous northward migration began six months ago. Ana and Moisés, 19, went hungry for two days in the Darién Gap, a perilous tract of jungle on the border of Colombia and Panama, after their food supply was lost to a wild river.
But their dreams were dashed when, days after taking office on January 20, the Trump administration cancelled the mobile phone app used by migrants to schedule asylum appointments while waiting in Mexico. Migrants were further deterred by widely publicised reports of deportations, sometimes in shackles, by Trump’s government.
Speaking on the beachfront as pelicans flew above a few sunbathing tourists, Alvis Mendoza, another returning Venezuelan, said: “Trump closed the border so I left . . . there was nothing left to do in Mexico.”
As Panamanian authorities also cracked down, the number of migrants crossing the Darién Gap into Panama in January and February fell 95.8 per cent from the same period in 2024, from 73,167 to 3,045, according to the country’s National Migration Service, after crossings fell 41 per cent in 2024.
Meanwhile, 1,639 “reverse” migrants arrived in Necoclí and Acandí, another municipality near the Darién Gap, between February 10 and February 28, with numbers rising towards the end of the month, according to Colombia’s migration agency. The vast majority continued immediately onward, said officials and aid workers.
Many Venezuelans do not have passports and therefore cannot fly, meaning they must undertake a long, costly overland odyssey to get home. The trip begins with bus journeys from Mexico through Central America to Colón, a city on Panama’s Atlantic coast.
From Colón, the Rincón siblings paid $300 each for boat travel to Necoclí, which took three days and included a nine-hour journey on the open seas to Puerto Obaldía, a small town near the Colombian border. Two more short voyages brought them to Capurganá on the Colombian frontier, then to Necoclí.
Panama has escalated its crackdown since Trump came to office, largely stopping travel through the Darién Gap. The return journey, while less dangerous than that route, is still fraught with risk. On February 21, a boat ferrying returning migrants capsized in Panamanian waters and an 8-year-old Venezuelan girl drowned.
They are returning to a bleak outlook in Venezuela. Authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro was installed for a third term in January despite widespread evidence of fraud in his re-election. Trump’s removal of Chevron’s licence to export oil from the country, a financial lifeline to the regime, will bring further economic pain.
Necoclí, a town of 15,000 once known as a quaint retreat for tourists drawn to its laid-back lifestyle, seafood cocktails and exotic beaches, boomed as migration along the route surged, including people from as far afield as Haiti and Bangladesh as well as from impoverished, repressive or violent areas of Latin America.
Local officials say the number of hotels and hostels mushroomed from 90 in 2021 to 240 in 2025, with most catering to migrants. Street vendors hawked mosquito repellent and wellington boots to those preparing to traverse the jungle.
But the town’s economy has taken a hit, as the daily stream of about 1,000 northbound migrants passing through Necoclí over the past two years now has dropped to a trickle.
“The phenomenon of mass migration was always a bubble,” said Carlos Rojas, secretary for tourism and economic development at the municipal government.
Daniel González, a rickshaw driver, made about $100 a day last year, largely from zipping migrants around town. “Now I’m lucky if I make a quarter of that,” he said, as he weaved around traffic on the sandy streets. Fisherman Heber Zúñiga, repairing his net at the side of the road, said he had fewer customers for his catch.
Also facing a hit from the change is Colombia’s Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces, also known as Clan del Golfo, a violent drug trafficking organisation that maintained near-total control of people-smuggling networks.
Bram Ebus, lead author of a 2023 International Crisis Group report on criminal activities in the Darién Gap, said the Gaitanistas may take advantage of reduced attention on the region to continue cocaine trafficking and expand their criminal influence.
“Migration brought the Darién Gap’s crime and social crises to the international agenda, highlighting its role as a key cocaine corridor to the US,” Ebus said. “If the spotlight fades, so will the scrutiny from law enforcement.”
While most migrants returning to Necoclí have the money — or access to credit from family — to continue their homeward journey, some arrive destitute.
William Rodríguez, 29, arrived in Necoclí with his wife and two infant children on the same boat as the Rincón siblings, but lacked the funds to go any further.
“We’ve got no money and nowhere to stay,” Rodríguez said as Saray Suárez, his wife, prepared baby formula by the pier. Another migrant made calls to find out how much money she and her teenage children would need to continue towards Venezuela.
“All we want is to get home,” Rodríguez said.
On weekdays, non-profits — including the Colombian Red Cross and Samaritans — provide free meals, but kitchens were closed when the family arrived on a Saturday. Several organisations in Necoclí have been hit by Trump aid cuts, worsening the plight of vulnerable migrants.
One humanitarian worker said the flow of reverse migrants was likely to grow as people currently in Mexico gathered funds to make the journey.
César Vallejo, who runs the Migration Observatory at the Externado University in Bogotá, said that while dramatically reduced migration numbers were “robust evidence” that Trump’s clampdown was dissuading migrants from heading to the US, the trend might not prove sustainable.
In the long term, “I don’t think it’ll stop migration, especially if things get worse in Venezuela,” he said.
Ana Rincón said bottlenecks were already forming on the southbound route, particularly in Panama, as ferry companies and smugglers reorient their operations.
“There are a lot of people waiting for boats along the way,” Rincón said, as ticket vendors shouted a list of onward destinations. “More will come.”
Data visualisation by Alan Smith and cartography by Andrew Francisco
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