Hello, welcome to another episode of the Weeds on the Box Media Podcast Network.

I'm Matthew E. Glacias and I am joined today by Adriana Beltran.

She is the director of the Citizen Security Program at the Washington office on Latin America.

And I'm really glad to have you here.

This is a discussion I've been looking forward to for a long time.

And we've talked on this show so many episodes about the sort of migration crisis in southern

border, the Trump administration's response.

But looking in the background of all that is obviously very large number of people are

leaving their homes in Central America.

And so I thought, it's really basically like, why?

Why are so many people leaving and trying to come here?

Sure.

Well, first thank you for having me on the show, Matt.

This is going to be an easy question, right?

We'll just wrap it up.

Exactly.

I mean, I would say, you know, there are a number of factors that are behind the decision

of families and individuals to have to flee their communities.

One has to do with the lack of economic opportunities and the fact that you have many Central Americans,

many families that don't have a secure job, a good job that are facing extreme levels of

poverty in their own communities and are forced to leave to seek better opportunities.

Part of that has to do with environmental changes and the fact that many of these communities

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