The Border Crisis Is More Than a Border Issue, It’s a Foreign Policy Issue
In the past eight months an estimated 60,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the US-Mexico border, with projections of 90,000 by the end of the fiscal year. According to reports by border agents registering those caught coming across, 70 percent are from the Northern Triangle. An area of Central America comprised of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, that despite the lack of media attention, has become one of the most dangerous and violent areas in the world.
Regardless of your views on immigration, and whether or not you see this as a humanitarian crisis or a result of failed immigration and border security policies on the part of Congress and the White House, this is a crisis. It is also an issue of foreign policy.
The United States is not the only country seeing an influx of migrants from the Northern Triangle. Between the years of 2008 and 2013 the UN recorded an increase of 712 percent in the number of individuals leaving that region and settling in places like Mexico, Panama, Belize and Costa Rica. That is a staggering number for five years, one that is typically more akin to refugees fleeing war. So why are they leaving?
The current issues facing the Northern Triangle are somewhat similar to what we are seeing in the Middle East, only the power struggle is not about religion and ethnicity, it’s about money and power. The US government projects that 95 percent of South American cocaine travels through Central America and Mexico before landing in the states. With the rapid growth of the cartel in Mexico, TOC groups (Transnational Organized Crime) have gained strongholds in countries throughout the region; specifically in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where already weak governments have been all but toppled by TOCs and gangs. Similar to the use of child soldiers in armed conflicts, gangs and cartels in the Northern Triangle are targeting children. They recruit and forcefully use children to carry out their activities. Those that do not participate are made examples of through kidnapping, torture, or murder. Honduras leads the world in murder rates with 90/100,000 residents.
While this crisis has reached our borders literally—in terms of thousands of immigrants pouring in—how is it that we missed the warning signs in our figurative backyard?
The mass of minors, women and young men sitting in makeshift camps in Texas and Arizona is definitely an issue that must be addressed. Congress and the White House need to figure out a policy that effectively answers all the questions that surround the issue of immigration. And the US needs to find a way to assist individuals crossing into the states who are truly fleeing their homeland for safety reasons. However, these issues will continue to circle back around if the underlying cause is not addressed. We seem to have ignored the rise of organized crime in Central America. A few years ago the OAS (Organization of American States) supported a pact between gangs and the government of El Salvador in an effort to decrease violence. All this led to was the gangs receiving more legitimate power. That is not effective policy. Just as the cartel spread from Columbia to Mexico to the Northern Triangle (and ISIL has done the same in the Middle East), how long until it spreads further? It’s not just about drugs and immigration. The gangs that have taken over deals in prostitution, human trafficking, and arms dealing. It’s about stability. Instability breeds poverty, desperation, violence that inevitably bleeds into neighboring nations. The US has a responsibility, both logistically and morally, to look at this border issue as more than a domestic problem. It is regional, therefore it can turn global, and in that respect it deserves an appropriate foreign policy response.
Sources: The UN Report on Central America: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/TOC_Central_America_and_the_Caribbean_english.pdf, Policy piece by Brian Resnick: http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/why-90-000-children-flooding-our-border-is-not-an-immigration-story-20140616, Article from the Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/2020/02/02/3908675/loss-of-central-americas-northern.html\
Photo courtesy of Vox.
