El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are struggling to cope with more than 34,000 repatriated convicted criminals, most of them gang members, who were deported from the United States between 1998 and 2004. More from today's Boston Globe.

...''maras," or youth street gangs, boast 100,000 members in Central America by conservative estimates. They are blamed for much of the violent crime that plagues this region -- from murder and rape to human trafficking, smuggling, drug dealing, home invasions, extortion, and kidnapping. The maras have links to an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in more than 30 US states, including Massachusetts, according to the FBI. With their role in trafficking people, illicit drugs, and weapons into the United States, the maras pose a transnational threat that sets them apart from other street gangs. The United States is aggressively pursuing maras by using racketeering statutes once employed against the Mob. But Central American governments have struggled with an array of iron-fist tactics that have failed to dent the problem.

In the 80s, the Globe notes, many of the gangbangers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador came here to escape wars in their countries. Of course, other, law-abiding immigrants came here from those countries then, legally and illegally.

Now, how many more Mexican and Central American immigrants illegally enter the United States each day, week and month pursue lives of crime here? And at what cost to law-abiding taxpayers when police and court resources are diverted as a result?

The Globe's story carefully skirts any mention of the immigration status of the 34,000 convicted Central American gang members deported from the U.S., but mentions that many first landed in Los Angeles in the 80s. Obviously, most, if not a vast majority, came across our nation's porous southern border with Mexico "undocumented."

The Globe takes pains to stress that a hardline aproach to the repat hoods in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras isn't working, and says lessons should be drawn from elsewhere in Central America:

In neighboring Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, where gang membership and violence are dramatically lower, authorities have focused on crime-prevention programs within families, schools, and communities...In one rehabilitation program in a working-class neighborhood of Guatemala City, a dozen tattooed former gang member study literacy, computers, and technical skills in an unmarked, nondescript house supported by US government funds.

I suspect there's more to it than job training and outreach programs. More jails, and less corruption among elected offcials, judges and police in the three countries might also help abate the ongoing gang crime wave. In any case, the dilemma of these countries intersects with the national interests of the United States, which is overburdened by illegal immigrants from the south, of the non-criminal and criminal variety.

Lost in the current national controversy over illegal immigration here is the responsibility of Mexico and Central American countries to improve living conditions, education and economic opportunity, so that fewer people will feel forced to flee, and those that do choose to migrate to the U.S. wil be able to do so in an orderly, law-abiding manner.

The missing piece, of course, is still adoption of a new U.S. immigration law which removes the current laissez-faire incentives for illegal immigration, and which provides resources for painstaking enforcement of legal border crossings only, and legal employment only, of immigrants.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, CENTRAL AMERICA, GANGS, CRIME, UNITED STATES, DEPORTATION, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS, EL SALVADOR, LOS ANGELES

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 17, 2006 12:52 PM