Gangs (maras) and organized crime have made the so-called Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) one of the most dangerous regions in the world in the past decade. This “new reality” has created an important shift in the push factors affecting migration flows in the Central America-Mexico-US migration corridor: soaring violence has caused rising numbers of people to run north to save their lives.
The Northern Triangle governments are often unwilling to acknowledge how significantly the increasing violence has changed migration. This has a serious impact on what has increasingly become part of the migrant’s journey: the
forced return.