Appalling: Venezuelans Risking A Deadly Trek to Reach The US

In record numbers, Venezuelans are risking a deadly trek to reach the U.S. border, and many of them are children.

Two crises are converging at the perilous land bridge known as the Darién Gap: the economic and humanitarian disaster underway in South America, and the bitter fight over immigration policy in Washington. 

This year, more than 150,000 Venezuelans have arrived at the U.S. border, a number that surpasses the worst period of the crisis in Venezuela when, from 2015 through 2018, apprehensions of migrants at the southern border never passed 100 people a year.

Most have been inspired to make the harrowing and sometimes deadly journey as word has spread that the U.S. has no way to turn many of them back. 

But their journeys — often poorly informed by videos ricocheting across social media — are producing brutal scenes in the Darién Gap, a 66-mile stretch of jungle terrain that connects South and Central America, a result of grinding, parallel crises unfolding to the north and south.

@fotojulie, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times, and @historiassencillas, a photographer for The Times, spent several days trekking the Darién Gap and speaking to Venezuelan migrants.