Laravel 8 - Access private laravel route from another application

I am using Laravel Framework 8.47.0.

I am trying to access a private API from my laravel application via a wordpress script.

I have created the following code to log in via curl and access the API:

    $BASE_URL = "https://mywebsite.com/";
    $module = "";

    try {
        // get json file from api
        $link = $BASE_URL . "hiddenApi";
        $username = '[email protected]';
        $password = 'systemPassword';

        $channel = curl_init();

        // Debugging
        // curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);

        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, TRUE);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_URL, $link);

        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);

        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_IPRESOLVE, CURL_IPRESOLVE_V4);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 0); // never times out during transfer
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 0);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE);
        curl_setopt($channel, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);

        $output = curl_exec($channel);
        $info = curl_getinfo($channel);
...

When executing the above code from my wordpress application I get as output the login-page.

Is there a better way to implement this?

Any suggestions what I am doing wrong?

I appreciate your replies!