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For centuries, jungle-covered mountains, swamps and poisonous snakes scared people away from the Darién Gap, the dense rainforest separating North and South America. It's still the only spot where the Pan-American Highway, that runs from Alaska all the way to the tip of South America, dissolves into mud. But thanks to the large numbers of migrants trying to get to the United States, the Darién Gap is no longer a no man's land.

In fact, when NPR first reached the region in September, birds singing and monkeys howling could not be heard. The main sound came from dozens of motorcycles. The passengers sitting on the back were migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, India and African countries. But because they lacked U.S. visas, they had to travel overland, first through South and Central America and then Mexico.

The hardest part is crossing the roadless, 60-mile-wide Darién Gap. To cover the first few miles, migrants can pay to ride on the back of motorcycles that navigate muddy trails. But soon the jungle thickens, and they must start walking.

Now that times are tough and jobs harder to find, China’s roughly 300 million migrant workers, with flimsy social benefits, have little to fall back on. They don’t enjoy the same health insurance, unemployment and retirement benefits as city-born people, as threadbare as their safety net is. Once migrant workers pass their prime working age, they are expected to go back to their home villages so they won’t become burdens to the cities.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, conceded in a speech in 2020, “When the economy experiences fluctuations, the first group to be affected are the migrant workers.”

He said more than 20 million migrant workers, unable to find work, had returned to their villages during the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, he said, nearly 30 million migrant workers had to stay home, and out of the reach of jobs, because of the pandemic.

The agency will help provide basic care as criticism mounts over the treatment of the increasing number of young migrants who have filled detention facilities at the southwest border.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist in processing an increasing number of children and teenagers who have filled detention facilities at the southwest border, as criticism mounts over the treatment of young migrants.

Previous administrations have also dispatched FEMA to help process migrants during surges in border crossings. However, the Biden administration cannot use disaster aid funding to support the processing of migrants in Texas after they cross the border without the consent of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican. States must request the funding from the federal government.

Wielding truncheons and firing tear gas, Guatemalan security forces on Sunday stepped up their efforts to stop a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants who have surged in from Honduras in recent days in hopes of reaching the United States.

as many as 7,000 people. Many are fleeing poverty and violence made worse by the pandemic and two major hurricanes that pummeled the region late last year.

In recent years, the Trump administration has put considerable pressure on the governments of Central America and Mexico to stop these large-scale mobilizations of migrants before they reach the southwest border of the United States.

The Latest: 7 bodies of migrants found near Spain, off coast

Spain's maritime rescue service says the bodies of seven African migrants have been found dead along the Strait of Gibraltar since Friday.

More than 181,000 people, most so-called "economic migrants" with little chance of being allowed to stay in Europe, attempted to cross the central Mediterranean last year from Libya, Africa's nearest stretch of coast to Italy. About 4,500 died or disappeared.

the tiny Gulf state, which won the right to host the event nearly three years ago, is embroiled in controversy over the treatment of the huge migrant labor force within its borders.

Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, defended his country's efforts in a CNN interview, and said he was outraged by the claim made last week by an international labor organization that it is a "slave state."

The "slave state" claim came as Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation, warned that if current trends continue an estimated 4,000 migrant workers may die in Qatar as they toil on construction projects in the run-up to the World Cup.

President Biden claimed Thursday in his first press conference since taking office that "nothing has changed" compared to earlier influxes of migrants and unaccompanied children at the border.

The Biden administration has been grappling with surging numbers of migrants, especially children arriving at the border without their parents. It is true, as Biden states, that numbers often rise during the early months of the year when temperatures begin to warm. But the number of children arriving today without their parents is considerably higher than at the same time in 2019 and 2020.

In fact, the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended by the Border Patrol were higher in February than they've been any previous February since 2014, according to data shared with NPR by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Migrant crisis: EU proposes $760 million emergency aid for Greece

The European Union announced plans Wednesday for 700 million euros ($760 million) in emergency aid to Greece as the economically struggling country copes with an influx of migrants stranded

Greece, the main gateway to Europe, had asked the EU for help to provide for tens of thousands of migrants in its territory.

EU's Tusk warns illegal economic migrants: Do not come here

European Council President Donald Tusk has warned illegal economic migrants against coming to Europe, during a new push to solve the EU migrant crisis.

"lives and money" for nothing.

Cubans Still Fleeing Castro While They CanIf Cubans try to float to the U.S., they’re sent back. So they take a great circle route overland that eventually funnels them across the M

In the humid heat of Tapachula in southern Mexico, a group of 40 Cubans relax on a sea of mattresses in a migrant shelter usually filled with about 15 Central American migrants.

“Everything is so expensive. If you go to the store to buy something, your salary is not going to be enough,” said José Fernández Márquez. “Cuba doesn’t change. It’s always the same.”

3,700 migrants from overcrowded and unsafe boats in the last two days

18 different boats

In a sunlit courtyard, volunteers at a church soup kitchen are handing out lunch bags and cups of fruit juice. Arcadina Dámaso, the coordinator, says demand has shot up. "Until December, a maximum of 50 people would come here," she says. "Now, we're serving 75. Most of the new ones are Senegalese and Moroccan."

Stricter controls across the Mediterranean have led more migrants to choose this longer, treacherous route to Europe. Nearly all who reach the islands want to end up in mainland Spain, to find jobs or join relatives, which is more than 1,000 miles away.

The bottleneck has angered some locals, while for migrants it's causing misery. Younes Rida, 30, is getting a meal at the soup kitchen.

US authorities arrested and encountered more than 100,000 migrants on the US-Mexico border over the past four weeks ending on March 3

The number of migrants arrested on the southern border has been increasing in recent weeks, causing alarm among officials as they scramble to provide resources for the increase in minors and families who are unlawfully crossing into the US.

Since last April, Customs and Border Protection has seen an increase in border encounters from the Western Hemisphere due to worsening economic conditions brought on by the pandemic and natural disasters in the region, according to the border agency.

It's a fast-moving situation, described by the Biden administration as a "stressful challenge" and decried by critics of immigration as a "crisis." There are a lot of details we're still learning in real time.

This is a higher number than we've seen before. At the peak of the 2019 border crisis -- when there were overcrowded facilities and children sleeping on the ground -- there were around 2,600 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol custody, a former CBP official told CNN.

The treatment of kids in custody is one of the thorniest issues at the border. One of the largest public outcries we heard during the Trump administration came when monitors revealed squalid conditions inside CBP facilities where children were held. We haven't heard much about the current conditions in these facilities. But it's concerning, because the number of children arriving is outpacing the Biden administration's ability to place them in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. And due to limited capacity at shelters, children are being held in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour limit the law requires.

The Biden administration took steps on Wednesday to address surging migration to the border, restoring a program allowing some Central American children to apply from their home country for admission to the United States and searching for additional housing for the increasing number of young migrants who have been detained after crossing from Mexico.

That program and a $4 billion investment in Central America have been framed by the administration as crucial tools to addressing the poverty, persecution and corruption that have for years pushed vulnerable families to seek sanctuary in the United States

Officials apprehended a migrant along the border or at its entry ports more than 100,400 times in February, a roughly 28 percent increase from the prior month.

The president’s promise of a more humane policy is being tested as more unaccompanied children seek to enter the United States from Mexico.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of migrant children are backed up in United States detention facilities along the border with Mexico, part of a surge of immigration from Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence that could overwhelm President Biden’s attempt to create a more humane approach to those seeking entry into the country.

The growing number of unaccompanied children is just one element of an escalating problem at the border. Border agents encountered a migrant at the border about 78,000 times in January — more than double the rate at the same time a year ago and higher than in any January in a decade.

The Biden administration will begin phasing in a new asylum process on Feb. 19 for the backlog of people seeking asylum on the southern U.S. border, but Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NPR that migrants must avoid traveling to the U.S. border while the new system gets up and running.

"It's a very, very important cautionary note that they should not travel to the border. That will only increase the pressure on the humanitarian effort to provide for them carefully and safely,"

The Department of Homeland Security plans to start allowing in a trickle of asylum-seekers — about 300 people per day — from among an estimated 25,000 people with "active cases" in the now-defunct Migrant Protection Protocols program.

Germany occupies a special place in the international imagination. After the horrors of the Holocaust and the difficulties of reunification, the country acquired a reputation as a leader of the free world. Economically prosperous, politically stable and more welcoming to immigrants than most other countries, the Germans — many thought — had really learned their lesson.

The past few months have been a bit of a rude awakening. The economy is stuttering and a constitutional court ruling has upended the government’s spending plans

The far-right Alternative for Germany party, fresh from success in two regional elections, is cementing itself as the country’s second-most-popular party.

Migrant crisis: EU meeting seeks to heal growing rifts

Ministers from EU and Balkan nations are meeting in Brussels to try to heal rifts over migrants that have plunged common policy into chaos.

More than 100,000 migrants have entered the EU illegally this year.

Migrant crisis: Boat sinking off Didim, Turkey claims 25 lives

A boat carrying migrants from Turkey to Greece has sunk with the loss of 25 lives, Turkey's coast guard says.

Reports suggest Macedonia has set new curbs on Syrian migrants trying to cross the land border from Greece.