What Going On in Central America?

By Patrick Finnegan

The news is saturated with stories about immigration policy and the U.S. southern border.  From the beginnings of his first presidential campaign, President Trump has made a crackdown on immigration the centerpiece of his politics.  As Dara Lind wrote recently on Vox, "President Trump’s constant temper tantrums about the US-Mexico border have become the background noise of his administration."  Despite the harshness of U.S. border policy and inhumane detention conditions in ICE custody, Central American migrants have continued to come to the U.S. in the tens of thousands.  With such a hostile political climate awaiting them, we should ask why.

Who is Coming to the Border?

Firstly, it is important to be clear on who is attempting to cross the border.  While most migrants are coming through Mexico, they are not themselves Mexican; for example, a Pew research study found that 62% of migrants apprehended by CBP in fiscal year 2018* were not Mexican.  In recent years, the majority of immigrants coming in at the southern border are from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.  As of May 2019, 53% of cases pending in U.S. immigration courts pertained to people from those three countries.  A large number of incoming migrants are family units, not only adults.

What is Driving Central Americans North?

As Dara Lind wrote, "The simplest answer is probably the truest: because things are bad enough for them in their home countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that they’ve decided to risk the journey to the US, and whatever treatment awaits them here, for a chance in America."  The principal factors driving this northward migration appear to be violence, corruption, and poverty.  The three countries, together known as the "Northern Triangle" of Central America, experience some of the world's highest rates of violence outside of conflict zones.

A brief glance at human rights conditions in each country is instructive.

El Salvador
According to Amnesty International's 2017-18 human rights report, "El Salvador’s high rate of gender-based violence continued to make it one of the most dangerous countries to be a woman."  Although El Salvador's murder rate decreased significantly from 2016 to 2017, it continues to have one of the highest rates in the world (50.3 per 100,000 according to data for 2018).

Human Rights Watch reported that "Gangs continued in 2018 to exercise territorial control and extort residents in municipalities throughout the country. They forcibly recruit children and subject some women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals to sexual slavery. Gangs kill, disappear, rape, or displace those who resist them, including government officials, security forces, and journalists.

Security forces have been largely ineffective in protecting the population from gang violence and have committed egregious abuses, including the extrajudicial execution of alleged gang members, sexual assaults, and enforced disappearances."

The U.S. State Department human rights report for 2018 identified the same issues in detail.

Although economic conditions have improved somewhat in recent years in El Salvador, the World Bank still noted that 31% of the population lived in poverty as of 2016.  The Congressional Research Service pointed out that crime and corruption may swallow up to 6% of the country's GDP.  Additionally, "[N]atural disasters, including flooding in 2017 and a drought in 2018, have hindered agricultural output."

Guatemala
As is the case in El Salvador, Guatemala faces the repercussions of organized crime and gang violence.  As Human Rights Watch reports, "Violence and extortion by powerful criminal organizations remain serious problems in Guatemala. Gang-related violence is an important factor prompting people, including unaccompanied children and young adults, to leave the country."  Recourse to the courts is limited: "Guatemala suffers from high levels of impunity, partly because criminal proceedings against powerful actors often suffer unreasonably long delays due to excessive use of motions by criminal defendants....  Intimidation against judges and prosecutors and corruption within the justice system continue to be problems."  Additionally, journalists are persistent targets for murder.

Amnesty International observes that human rights defenders continue to operate under threat: "The Guatemalan NGO Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala said that defenders working on rights related to land, territory and the environment faced the highest number of attacks...  In addition, human rights defenders were constantly subjected to smear campaigns to stigmatize and discredit them and their work..."

The U.S. State Department human rights report states that "Human rights issues included reports of harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; widespread corruption; trafficking in persons; crimes involving violence or threats thereof targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons, persons with disabilities, and members of other minority groups; and use of forced or compulsory or child labor."

In regard to economic conditions, the Congressional Research Service reports that "Guatemala’s stable growth rates have not been enough to decrease some of the highest levels of economic inequality and poverty in the region. Instead, Guatemala has backtracked.  After decreasing the overall poverty rate from 56% to 51% between 2000 and 2006, the rate increased to 59% in 2014, with a rate just over 79% for indigenous people, according to a national survey."

Honduras
Summing up human rights conditions in Honduras, Amnesty International notes "The level of insecurity and violence remained high. Widespread impunity continued to undermine public trust in the authorities and the justice system. Protests in the aftermath of the presidential election [of 2017] were brutally repressed by security forces.  Honduras remained one of the most dangerous countries in the Americas region for human rights defenders, especially for those working to protect land, territory and the environment."

Human Rights Watch reports that, "Despite a downward trend in recent years, the murder rate remains among the highest in the world" (44 per 100,000 in 2017).  Additionally, "A crackdown on protests following the November 2017 national elections resulted in the death of at least 22 civilians and one police officer, and in more than 1,300 detentions.  Journalists, environmental activists, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals are vulnerable to violence. Efforts to reform the institutions responsible for providing public security have made little progress. Marred by corruption and abuse, the judiciary and police remain largely ineffective. Impunity for crime and human rights abuses is the norm."

The U.S. State Department human rights report highlights the widespread effects of organized crime and gang activity: "Organized criminal elements, including local and transnational gangs and narcotics traffickers, were significant perpetrators of violent crimes and committed acts of homicide, extortion, kidnapping, torture, human trafficking, intimidation, and other threats and violence directed against human rights defenders, judicial authorities, lawyers, the business community, journalists, bloggers, women, and members of vulnerable populations."

Economic conditions in Honduras are harsh, with two thirds of the labor force un- or under-employed.  The Congressional Research Service notes that "The Honduran economy has expanded by an average of 3.9% annually over the past five years, but it is not generating sufficient employment to absorb the country’s growing labor supply."  Additionally, "Honduras’s recent economic growth has also proven insufficient to reduce the country’s high poverty rate....  More than 67% of Hondurans live below the national poverty line. Conditions are particularly difficult in rural Honduras, where nearly 63% of the population lives in extreme poverty—unable to satisfy their basic nutritional needs.  In recent years, many rural communities have struggled to contend with a coffee fungus outbreak and a series of droughts that have destroyed crops and reduced agricultural production and employment."

Another Factor: Climate Change

Climate change is another factor driving migration from all three countries.  For example, as PBS Newshour points out, "Since 2014, a serious drought has decimated crops in Central America’s so-called dry corridor along the Pacific Coast. By impacting smallholder farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, this drought helps to drive higher levels of migration from the region.  Coffee production, a critical support for these countries’ economies, is especially vulnerable and sensitive to weather variations. A recent outbreak of coffee leaf rust in the region was likely exacerbated by climate change.  The fallout from that plague combines with the recent collapse in global coffee prices to spur desperate farmers to give up."

How these Reasons for Migration Should Inform our Thinking

I have highlighted some important summaries and information points from a handful of credible sources.  Bear in mind, however, that summaries describe broad trends, but hide important human details.  Every killing, every instance of extortion, every natural disaster, every painful aspect of material deprivation is a substantial harm to individuals and communities.  Human beings, like you and me.  It is easy to breeze through summaries of human rights reports with a certain feeling of somber distance.  But we must not forget that the decision to migrate north is not one that people - especially parents with children - take lightly.  It behooves us to try and put ourselves in the shoes of people who make the perilous trek through Mexico, to try and understand why families would assume such risk for a hostile reception by U.S. authorities.

I shouldn't have to say this in the 21st century.  Our morality should be evolved enough to think in these terms.  Yet this most basic of thought exercises is conspicuously and violently absent from the minds of the President and his administration.  It has been lacking in past administrations as well, but the Trump administration has taken this callousness to new levels.  Instead of addressing southern border migration as a humanitarian crisis requiring a compassionate and well-crafted response, Trump and his associates have systematically dehumanized people in need, conflating them with criminals and attacking them on racist terms.  Tearing families apart in detention - a practice that continues - is a heartless and cruel act unworthy of a country that so frequently touts its moral foundations.  It is a deliberate step backwards in human progress, based on false claims to bolster a corrupt and hollow administration.  We need to critically examine our national conscience.  It is incumbent upon us to lay claim to a sense of shared humanity with people in need; to reject cruelty; and to craft creative and intelligent solutions to complex problems.

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*The federal fiscal year runs from October 1- September 30