The Cycle of Violence: Migration From the Northern Triangle

Abstract

This report documents the brutal and pervasive abuses suffered by Central American migrants in efforts to seek refuge from gang and state violence, government corruption, social exclusion, and endemic poverty. The cyclical nature of this violence – that is, the tendency of its victims to be caught in a cycle of forced migration, deportation, and remigration – reflects that the involved governments have collectively failed in both resolving its underlying causes, and stemming its devastating effects. For instance, reintegration programs that might afford deportees the opportunity to rebuild their lives are thoroughly lacking in the NTCA; and simultaneously, U.S. and Mexican immigration officials are routinely neglecting their legal obligations to screen apprehended migrants for asylum claims before summarily deported them. Our aim is to explicate factors such as these, which reveal long-standing patterns of impunity for criminal organizations and corrupt officials, negligence, and a lack of politicalwill which perpetuate what has become a deepening cycle of human rights abuses. By using data from the cases of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran clients6 who sought legal counsel at El Rescate – as well as scholarly works, government figures, and the findings of various non-governmental organizations – our report sheds light on the policies and practices that systematically marginalized those compelled to flee the Northern Triangle.