January 23, 2024
On December 17, 2022, José Gregorio Roa lost track of his wife and daughter, who had set out on a boat from the island of San Andrés, Colombia, headed for the coast of Nicaragua. Both disappeared.
Jacqueline Velazco Zambrano, 51, left Venezuela with her daughter Grecia Yarleni Roa Velazco, 21, hoping to join José Gregorio in the United States. But like many groups of migrants in the last two years, they vanished in the Caribbean Sea.
José Gregorio’s family are two of the nearly 8 million Venezuelan migrants who have fled due to the country’s severe economic and humanitarian crises. To help them leave Venezuela, the women turned to a “tourist advisor” who offered to take them to the United States via the Colombian island of San Andrés.
The island is 381 kilometers off the coast of Nicaragua and has become a popular migratory route in the last two years, as it allows migrants to avoid the dangerous Darien Gap bottleneck on the Colombia-Panama border. The Darien has become a common corridor for migrants seeking to reach the United States. According to Panamanian authorities, 770,085 migrants crossed the jungles of the Darien Gap between 2022 and 2023. Of them, 478,994 were Venezuelans.
José Gregorio arrived in the United States via that dangerous route three months before his wife and daughter. But Jacqueline and Grecia wanted to be more cautious and chose a different path. They did not expect that the alternative route they chose would also be fraught with danger.
“What I find the most devastating is that we don’t know what happened to them,” said José Gregorio.
The Journey
At first glance, the travel package and logistics that Jacqueline and Grecia found seemed perfect. Each paid a little over $2,000, which covered flights from the Colombian border city of Cúcuta, in Norte de Santander, to the capital, Bogotá, and from there to San Andrés, where they would be transferred by sea to the coast of Nicaragua.
Like many others, they fell for attractive advertisements on social media that promised to take them to the United States. For their journey, Jacqueline and her daughter Grecia contacted Franklin Hurtado, an alleged “tour manager,” through Facebook.
Migrant smuggling networks are usually made up of local operators, also known as “coyotes,” who ensure the transit of people between two or more countries.
According to José Gregorio, Hurtado seemed trustworthy. The women exchanged phone numbers with him, and were in frequent contact, often through video calls, as they prepared for the trip.
Jacqueline and Grecia arrived at the Cúcuta airport on December 9 and printed their tickets. From there, they were accompanied by supposed tour managers to Bogotá, where they spent one night and then flew to San Andrés. During that time, they were not allowed to interact with other passengers or people at the airport, José Gregorio recalled.
On the night of December 11, the women boarded a boat leaving San Andrés for Nicaragua. But a Colombian navy frigate intercepted their boat and sent them back to Bogotá. They feared that their journey was over, but at the airport, a migration agent helped them return to the island.
The business of smuggling migrants through the Caribbean has exposed levels of corruption among Colombian officials in key institutions, including the navy and Migration Colombia.
“At the airport, [an official] told them they could get out of there and that they could get them on another boat that would take them to their destination,” said José Gregorio.
Similar cases occurred in 2023. On December 5, authorities dismantled a migrant smuggling network that transported migrants bound for the United States, Canada, and Australia to San Andrés. The organization was made up of 19 civilians who recruited the migrants and hosted them in different inns. Five navy officers and a Colombian migration official were accused of failing to follow maritime signaling regulations, alerting the network to the location of military vessels, and affixing false stamps in the migrants’ passports.
Once they returned to San Andrés, Jaqueline and Grecia were moved from inn to inn by supposed travel managers for eight days, not knowing when or how they would travel to Nicaragua. Finally, on December 17 at dawn, it was time to take the second boat.
“They just told us that we have to get on the boat and that we are about to leave,” Jacqueline wrote to José Gregorio. Two minutes later, his daughter sent him a message that seemed to be the beginning of a farewell: “Daddy.” But the next message did not arrive, and since then, there has been no word of them or the other 24 migrants on their boat.
An Alternative to the Darién Jungle
“They planned to leave San Andrés, reach Nicaragua, and continue through Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, and present themselves at the border to seek an [asylum] appointment,” said José Gregorio.
The journey to the United States is often fraught with danger, and there have been many accidents in the Darien jungle and shipwrecks of migrants who have departed for the Caribbean islands from the Venezuelan states of Falcon and Delta Amacuro in unregistered boats, in poor conditions, and with excess passengers.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that, of all the routes, the highest number of missing and dead migrants corresponds to those who have crossed through the Darién, where at least 360 people have disappeared since 2015, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Of those who have left Venezuela’s coasts in unregistered boats, at least 187 are missing, though the actual figure may be higher, since the number of irregular migrants is often underreported.
Faced with these dangers, many have opted for the San Andrés route, which they perceive as safer than the Darién. The numbers back this up. According to Migration Colombia, since 2021, the number of irregular migrants detected on the island has increased, most of whom are from Venezuela.
Number of irregular migrants detected in San Andres (2015 – 2023)*
*January – November 2023
January 2023
Source: Migration Colombia
i n s i g h t c r i m e . o r g
Nationality of irregular migrants registered in San Andres, Colombia (2022 – 2023)
*January – November 2023
January 2023
Source: Migration Colombia
i n s i g h t c r i m e . o r g
But the events recorded in the last year show that this is anything but a safe route. Currently, there are at least four missing boats and between 100 and 140 Venezuelans whose whereabouts are unknown.
In Search of Answers
After losing contact with his wife and daughter, José Gregorio sought answers about their whereabouts from the tour manager they hired, but he got no response. After asking for days, his messages stopped going through, and he realized that the man had blocked him. Two months later, José Gregorio verified that the “manager” was still operating.
“Someone was able to contact him with another profile, and I was able to listen to the same man who talked to my wife and daughter and all the people who traveled with them,” he said.
Other criminals have found additional ways to profit from the desperation of migrants and their families. In the four days after the boat disappeared, José Gregorio and other relatives of the people on the boat were extorted by a man calling himself “the black boss of the Juárez Cartel,” who assured them that their relatives had been kidnapped in Mexico.
A year after the disappearance of José Gregorio’s wife and daughter, disappearances on the route between San Andrés and Nicaragua continue to increase. On December 20, 2023, Colombian authorities rescued 11 Venezuelan migrants on the island. Three days later, two Venezuelan migrants were found lifeless in Nicaraguan waters, while another 30 migrants were rescued.
Attention to this route has grown in recent months. In November 2023, Colombian Ombudsman Carlos Camargo issued an alert about the dangers to which migrants traveling this route are exposed. “Migrants face shipwrecks, abandonment, the disappearance of boats, among other situations that put their safety, integrity and life at risk,” he warned in a press release.
Despite this, José Gregorio has not given up. He has given statements to international media and has sought help from the Colombian authorities. But he has found no answers.
“I believe that they are alive,” he said. “I don’t believe that they disappeared as the result of a shipwreck because it is not possible that some 100 people have disappeared and not even one life vest is found.”