The Foreign Service Journal, October 2018

26 OCTOBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Transnational crime syndicates have exacerbated illegal immigration problems at our southern border. A State initiative aims at undercutting the migration push at the source. BY J I M NEALON THE “PLACE- BASED STRATEGY” in Honduras James D. Nealon was ambassador to Honduras from 2014 to 2017. He is currently a Wilson Center Global Fellow. A Foreign Service officer from 1984 to 2017, he served in 10 overseas posts in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He served as deputy chief of mission in Montevideo, Lima and Ottawa, and as civilian deputy to the com- mander of the U.S. Southern Command. Ambassador Nealon ended his government career in 2018 as assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. A wall on the Mexican border; family separation; tightening of rules gov- erning asylum; the end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals; termi- nation of Temporary Protected Status; and now, we hear, an effort to make it more difficult for immigrants here legally to become citizens. The Trump administration has reacted to the problems on our southern border by trying to increase border security to keep people out. Missing from the current debate is a focus on mitigating the push factors of migration for those who can walk to the United States. In the summer of 2014 reports of unaccompanied children fromCentral America pouring across our southwestern border were national news—they featured in New York Times headlines, lively discussions on cable news and spirited debate in Congress. There seemed to be no stopping this mass migration of young people fleeing violence, poor governance and lack of economic opportunity. The media, and Congress, demanded action. I was confirmed as the next U.S. ambassador to Honduras in July of that year, and was politely told to get down there and “do something” about the unaccompanied minor crisis. When I arrived in Tegucigalpa in August, I found that the embassy was already intensely focused on trying to improve conditions that were driving the migration. In fact, I could readily articulate a mantra for our activities: We are working with the Hondurans to reduce violence, improve governance and create economic opportunities such that Hondurans would see their future in Hon- duras, and not in the United States. The problemwas, something wasn’t working. Hondurans, especially family units and unaccompanied children, continued to head to the southwest border in huge numbers. It’s not that we weren’t running great programs in Honduras and elsewhere in Central America—we were. But, inevitably, over time those programs had become focused on outputs rather than results. Howmany people did we train? Did we have the right people at the table? How were we measuring success? And while we were running programs designed to make Honduras safer, more pros- perous and better governed, we weren’t focused specifically on reducing migration. At the time, Honduras was still among the most violent non- war zones in the world. In fact, the murder rate had peaked in 2012 at 86 per 100,000 (that number in the U.S. is slightly less than five) and had only come down marginally since then. And the murder rate in the communities most subject to conflict was ON COMBATING TRANSNATIONAL CRIME FOCUS