Since
2015, the number of Mexicans entering the US has been equalled by the
number leaving. But there been a leap in people from the so-called
northern triangle – Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
In 2018, citizens of those countries accounted for 87 per cent of
Central American immigrants. At the same time, the number of
apprehensions at the southern border – while increasing in the last
two years – stood at 467,000 in 2018, down from 1 million a
year in the mid-1980s. Experts say the biggest source of illegal
immigration to the US is people who overstay their visas.
In
2017, 22,381 Hondurans were deported by US authorities, according to
information released by US customs and immigration officials. In
2018, that figure increased by around 30 per cent to 28,894, the
equivalent of 80 people a day. Twice a week, two or three flights
containing up to 300 deportees land at San Pedro Sula airport where
the human cargo is quickly off-loaded. Many say they intend to rest
for a few months, then try again.
“People
here don’t have jobs to sustain themselves – for rent, for food –
and people did this for the future of their children,” says Bartolo
Fuentes, a former politician and activist who urged people
considering joining various caravans to “go together” for safety,
but who denies organising them. “Insecurity is another reason. If
you try to open a business, someone extorts you. Climate change is
another factor, as is the politics.”
The
former Honduran president, Zeyala, blamed the government’s
neo-liberal agenda, which he said was enforced by the military.
“The
people in our country have a lot of needs and are hungry so they take
this decision to go,” he says. “They don’t have jobs, there is
corruption. This is the reality for our people, and this is the
economic model supported by the US.”
Asked what to do to stop the migration, he says the government has to
“start a process where human beings are the reason, the centre and
the objective of the government”.
The
epidemic of violence has its origins a quarter of a century ago, when
the US began deporting Central Americans who had formed gangs in
jails in places such as California. They had originally headed north
to flee civil wars in which the US often supported murderous
military-backed regimes. Honduras has the second highest murder rate
for a country that is not an official war zone. El Salvador, which
has a rate of 82 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to Honduras’s
56, has the highest.
Of
Honduras’s 10 million people, up to two-thirds live in poverty.
Perhaps 20 per cent live in extreme poverty, the World Bank said in
2016, surviving off less than $1.90 per day. More than half the
population is under the age of 25, and youth unemployment stands at
around 8 per cent.
The
impact of climate change in the dry corridor in the southwest has
made life even tougher for those dependent on agriculture, the
largest source of income. Honduran farmers were already
struggling with a coffee blight and the globally low price of coffee
beans.
Another
factor is corruption. In 2009, the country’s left-leaning
president, Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Hugo Chavez, was ousted in a
military coup. The US declined to recognise it as such, partly in
order not to trigger the automatic cessation of aid. The current
president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, a conservative ally of the United
States, was elected in 2013, and re-elected in 2017 amid widespread
allegations of electoral fraud. Accusations of corruption have dogged
his presidency. In 2016, his sister was forced to stand down amid
protests after Hernandez made her a cabinet minister. In recent
months, cities such as San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa have been
rocked by public unrest over government plans to privatise healthcare
and education. Even more damaging to the president are allegations
his brother has been a major narco-trafficker, overseeing shipments
of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Antonio Hernandez
Alvarado was arrested last November by Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) agents in Miami. In May, the former member of
Honduras’s congress appeared in court in New York where he was
charged with scheming over several years to bring tonnes of cocaine
into the US using planes, boats, and, on one occasion, a submarine.
The president has admitted that
he too has previously been investigated by the DEA. The newly
elected president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who campaigned on an
anti-corruption platform, declined to invite Hernadez to his swearing
in.
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