This is the New World Report. I'm John Batchowith, Professor Evangelist of the U.S. Army War

College, looking at the northern triangle of Central America. This is the America's

report, and we go to two headlines from two of the three parts of the northern triangle.

Human rights body urges El Salvador to restore civil rights. Tens of thousands of young people

chiefly male, to my understanding, are detained in El Salvador. Buckele, the very popular,

very impulsive president, says that he is solving the crime problem, solving it with mass

dragnets and the brutality towards the people who are incarcerated, who are future gang

members in resentment is the evidence that we have in the United States. You want to turn

somebody into a really violent criminal, put him in human conditions, and let him learn

that there is no love. We also have a headline from Honduras recently in the news because

of flap over the PRC in Taiwan, but this is about the same problem. Honduras again extends

emergency powers to fight violent gangs. Professor, I bring this up because two years ago,

when there was that first rush towards the border, as I recall in the news, the common

explanation by many, including the Biden administration, was that the northern triangle is a hotbed

of violence and drugs and narcoterrorism and poverty, and therefore those cavalcade,

those parades of people rushing towards the American border. Now it is two years later,

and the question is, are these gangs stronger? Are they weaker? Is the northern triangle

succeeding in its effort because there is no evidence along the border that the flow has

changed?

John, since the really early to mid-2000s, the combination of not only lack of economic

opportunity, but the gang violence has just been overwhelming in these three states that

you mentioned, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. El Salvador was probably traditionally

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