Colombia Is Losing the Race Against the Venezuelan Migrant Crisis
MAICAO, Colombia—Neat rows of family-size tents from the United Nations refugee agency, 60 in all, flap in the wind on a patch of empty desert near Colombia’s border with Venezuela. Nearby, a construction crew flattens the parched earth for space to set up three times as many.
This is precisely what Colombia had insisted would never happen.
As Venezuela’s economic and political crisis has deepened—President Nicolás Maduro’s leadership is rejected by an array of countries, yet he has refused to vacate his post; the army has declined to abandon him; and hyperinflation has made day-to-day life unbearable for the vast majority of people there—the tide of Venezuelan migrants crossing into Colombia has steadily risen. Throughout, officials here have pressed
