(Reuters) – Honduran President Juan Hernandez blamed U.S. drug policy for sparking violence in Central American countries and driving a surge of migration to the United States, according to an interview published on Monday.
Hernandez, who took office in January after winning on a pledge to be tough on crime, said only a drop in violence would curb the wave of families and unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who have overwhelmed temporary detention facilities on the U.S. border.
“Honduras has been living in an emergency for a decade,” Hernandez told Mexican daily newspaper Excelsior. “The root cause is that the United States and Colombia carried out big operations in the fight against drugs. Then Mexico did it.”
Those operations pushed drug traffickers into Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, he suggested, adding: “This is creating a serious problem for us that sparked this migration.”
Hernandez said more resources were needed in Central America to fight drug gangs and he said his country was deserving of U.S. aid similar to the programs that funded anti-drug operations in Colombia and Mexico.
Read the full story at Reuters.
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