America's Glaring Problem: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador

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At The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan explains the root cause of America’s illegal immigration problem today, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. He writes:

USA Today reports: “Through August of the current fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended 457,871 migrants arriving as ‘family units’ … a 406% increase compared to the 90,554 family unit apprehensions during the same period the previous year.

Migrant families from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador made up almost 92% of the total.”

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

El Salvador is a broken country, with rampant gang violence. The International Crisis Group reports:

Nearly 20,000 Salvadorans were killed from 2014 to 2017. That’s more violent deaths than in several countries that were at war during those years, such as Libya, Somalia and Ukraine. The murder rate – an astonishing 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 – is still sky-high at 60 per 100,000 in 2017. The culprit in most of these murders is the maras, the country’s powerful, pervasive criminal gangs.

The maras, including the infamous MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, are active in 94 per cent of El Salvador’s 262 municipalities. In many of these “red zones”, gangs are not just a standing danger to public safety but also a de facto authority that exerts tremendous control over residents’ daily lives.

The members of MS-13 are making their way to the United States alongside other El Salvadorans. Once here, the gang members return to their violent ways.

Read more about the plague of MS-13 here: