'Like a natural disaster had hit': Venezuela's crisis is spilling over its borders - here's what it's like at ground zero of the exodus

REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Colombian police officers in front of people queueing to try to cross into Colombia from Venezuela on the Simon Bolivar international bridge in Cucuta, Colombia, January 24, 2018.

Protracted political, social, and economic crises in Venezuela have sparked a mass movement of people. Venezuelans have fled throughout the region and around the world, as far afield as Chile, Spain, and various points in between.

But Colombia, which shares a 1,400-mile border with Venezuela, has become a focal point for their migration. One border town in particular, Cucuta, has borne the brunt.

Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office in Latin America, spent February in Colombia, stopping in the departments of Norte de Santander and Arauca on the eastern border and Putumayo on the southern frontier. While there, he visited Cucuta.

In the interview below, edited for length and clarity, he revealed what he saw at the front line of Venezuela's exodus.