CASE STUDY The Darién Gap Migrants seeking to enter the United States from Africa, Asia, or the Caribbean often start their journey in South America before moving northward. When they reach the border between Colombia and Panama, they have two options. One is to cross through the controlled border where Panamanian officials check for documentation; the other is through the rainforest. The terrain is so difficult that this region is known as the Darién Gap.348 This route has been long used for drug smuggling as well as human trafficking.349 With little to no state presence or service provision, births in the region are usually unregistered. Displacement of the indigenous communities by violent attacks from Colombian armed groups, particularly drug trafficking guerrillas, worsened the situation.350 Meanwhile, increased migration has increased the number of children born to migrant women passing through the region. For both members of the indigenous communities and migrants, their children’s right to Colombian nationality and the process by which they might establish it are unclear. In response to increased migration through the area, Panama tightened immigration controls on May 9, 2016, leaving about 1,300 migrants stranded in the town of Turbo, close to the Panama border, unable to cross. The Colombian Ombudsman’s Office calculated that 1,273 of these stranded migrants were Cuban, including 300 children, and 11 pregnant women (with one reported birth351). As law and practice in Colombia stand, a child born to Cuban parents, with no proof of domicile, will not have access to Colombian nationality under the statelessness safeguard. Thus, the child born in Turbo to Cuban parents has a birth certificate, but no nationality, as Cuba will only grant nationality if parents request it while being physically present in Cuban territory. The same destiny awaits other children born in Colombia to these stranded migrants. Like the Aymaras in Chile and various communities in Rondonia, Brazil, this case illustrates the challenges of documenting the identity of populations in border regions, where there are virtually no registration services available—and in this case with the added complexity of an influx of migrants. This situation would pose a problem for most states, but is particularly challenging for Colombia, with its conditional jus soli and gaps between its citizenship laws and practices. BORN IN THE AMERICAS 79