Around the world, people are displaced by conflict, violence and human rights violations. UNHCR data indicates that at the end of 2021, 89.3 million people were displaced. According to the same UN agency, this population included 1,186,879 refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. This number likely paints an incomplete picture, as official statistics do not include people who hire a smuggler, evade arrest, disappear, or die in transit.3 Much of the violence against civilians in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala is perpetrated by criminals who want to take advantage of the less fortunate and those trying their best to get ahead: "In El Salvador, in general, people live day-to-day in survival mode, hoping you don’t get killed...”2
These gang groups first emerged in Los Angeles in the 1960s, when disaffected young people banded together to hang out in their neighborhoods. Three decades later, when the U.S. began mass expulsions of noncitizens, including young people from El Salvador who had joined these street gangs in Los Angeles, El Salvador was not prepared for the arrival of these deportees nor for the importation of U.S.-style gang culture. Groups such as the gang Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and Barrio 18 (today divided into rival factions of the southerners and revolutionaries) quickly gained control of much of the country and offered alienated teenagers a sense of belonging, identity, and social status.3 The El Salvadorian government tried combatting the maras with militarized patrols, raids in neighborhoods and mass arrests, however, his did not work: "Those who have been attacked by a gang need to change their routines and residence. Some, affected by limited resources or tied to family and country, move nationally and try to keep a low profile. The victims soon discover, however, that they will never be safe in El Salvador.” 3 In addition, the government's response can create distrust among citizens, especially when the response is to conform to the gangs.1 At this point they turn to Mexico or, more often, the United States, a country they associate with pre-existing security, economic opportunity, and family ties.3
Every year, an estimated 377,000 people flee from Central America, the majority of whom come to the United States. This number has peaked at a maximum 651,000 people in 2019. What circumstances lead to so many people abandoning their countries? While gang violence is a key problem, the economic reality is also brutal. With 44% of the Guatemalan population being less than twenty years old, there are more people that need or will need a job than are employers. 76% of Honduran immigrants claim that their primary reason to immigrate stem from economic reasons, which are then amplified by natural disasters, crime, and corrupt governments.
•The World Food Program discovered that from 2019 to 2021, the number of food insecure feed people in the north of Central America tripled: from 2.2 million to 6.4 million people.
•In 1998 there was a hurricane that displaced 2.5 million people in Honduras and killed 11.000 people. In 2020 there were two hurricanes that hit Honduras during the same season, damaging 85,000 houses, making 2.4 million people food insecure.
•The explosion of the demand for drugs in the United States of America at the start of the twenty first century increased cartel activity.
In 2022, the boarder control in the United States detained 177,000 of the 521,000 immigrants that that arrived at the border while the other 344,000 were rejected. With an acceptance rate of 0% if immigrants arrive at the border without papers regardless of their circumstances, they have to resort to dangerous methods. Only the truly determined or the truly desperate decide to (or have to) make the journey.