By: Staff Writer
October 25, 2022
A regional journalist said that 38 of the 50 most violent cities are in the Central American and Caribbean region and crime as violent street gangs are pushing migrants towards the United States.
Jeremy McDermott, the co-founder and co-director of Insight Crime, said at the 11th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against transnational organized crime in Vienna, Austria that there are also socio-political and economic constraints that are also a pattern but they play into the wider crime landscape.
M McDermott also said: “…Obviously, organized crime is a major factor in driving migration… Haiti is now essentially a failed state. We’ve got gangs running many of the neighbourhoods, particularly in the capital of Port au Prince. And insecurity, I think is the major factor in driving Haitians to particularly the United States, but also to other parts of the world.
“Cuba and Nicaragua are two nations where we cannot put organized crime as the principal driver. This has more to do with political and economic constraints, than security issues and driven by organized crime, so they don’t necessarily fit into the pattern.”
Speaking directly to the wave of over 6m Venezuelans that have left their home country, the matter is slightly different than that of their northern neighbours because most of the migrants head towards other South American countries rather than heading north to the US.
He added: “Up until now the vast majority has been to other Latin American and particularly South American nations and as you can see, Colombia has received more than 2m Venezuelans followed by Peru, Ecuador and Chile. So slightly different dynamic here, not all heading northwards. But again, this is in no small part driven by organized crime as well as the economic collapse that Venezuelans seen in recent years. And then we’ve also got to put in some of the political pressures as well.”
What is even more startling to the transnational crime matrix is the extant threat of kidnapping and extortion where minors are used as bait and in some instances, criminal actors. “Also relevant is the recruitment of children. This is particularly relevant in the Northern Triangle. And places like Colombia where, where minors are recruited into either the street gangs or into guerrilla movements and other drug trafficking organizations, Mr McDermott said. “Obviously, parents would rather move than see their children be recruited into these different criminal structures and the homicides and general insecurity, without doubt, fed by transnational and national organized crime and one of the principal factors in people making the decision that it’s time to go.”
For many of these people the risk of staying in their home countries is far greater than taking the trek up to the North American border and making an escape to the US. This is however, creating a black market for human smuggling networks that feed off of these desperate people.
Mr McDermott also said: “I want to flip it on its head and let’s look at how transnational organized crime is profiting from the displacement and migration which it in no small part provokes. The most obvious way is transnational organized crime runs many of the human smuggling networks that ferry migrants across borders, sidestepping border controls, and migration authorities.”
He continued, “A second way that transnational organized crime is benefiting is extorting and robbing migrants as they as they continue their journey. Thirdly, they are exploiting and recruiting some desperate migrants who will be pressed into carrying drugs, pressured into becoming sex workers, even carrying out killings for transnational organized crime syndicates. And then number four: Transnational Organized Crime is using migrants to establish permanent presence in cells in other nations.
“Transnational Organized Crime prefers to work with its own compatriots or nationals. Now, the reasons for this are not simply communication and cultural affiliation, but also the fact that the criminals have the added leverage of being able to exert pressure on these workers by threatening their family members back home.”