January 23, 2018
From the article:
It is an exodus of children, fleeing alone, on a scale new to the modern world. They have been leaving Central America’s violent, impoverished “Northern Triangle” so massively that in just a few years, a full 10 percent of some age cohorts have left. They travel without their families, risking everything to reach the United States. “You’re stalked by gangs … there are no jobs for young people,” says one boy. “In El Salvador, there is a wrong: It’s being young.”
Understanding these children is a regional and national security issue. It is a regional security issue because the places these children flee — Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala — are plagued by transnational drug networks and violent street gangs. It is a national security issue because many of the children rely on adult smugglers who are themselves linked to transnational organized crime. Military and civilian officials responsible for border and regional security understand these complex threats well.
To make these children and the whole region safer, we need to understand in detail what has been driving them to move. Washington has witnessed a noisy debate about the root causes of this child migration. Some attribute the migration primarily to the high poverty rates and low economic opportunity endemic to the Northern Triangle. Others attribute it primarily to violence in the region. Many U.S. administration officials find the drivers to be a complex mix of low employment and lack of viable economic opportunities on the one hand, and security issues such as gang violence and cartel activity on the other.