Honduran President Juan Hernandez Asks For Aid From the U.S.

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Today, Honduran officials requested U.S. aid to Central American to help stem violence that has filled the surge of child migration to the U.S.

Honduran President Juan Hernandez said the U.S. should help his country, as well as Guatemala and El Salvador with funding to fight gangs and create anti-drug programs similar to those in Mexico and Columbia, as well as supply funding to lift up impoverished regions in the countries.

“One has to recognize that our countries can’t do it alone,” President Hernandez said at a conference about the children fleeing for the United States. “We need help from the United States, from Mexico, because this is everyone’s problem.”

Hernandez, who took office in January, said U.S. backed battles against cartels in Mexico and Colombia have pushed drug traffickers into Central America, which has increased violence and caused the exodus.

Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Aguero said that efforts to beef up security at the U.S. border were not working and that U.S. aid to them would be better spent.

“It’s much more practical for the United States to launch a mini-Marshall plan, as they did after World War Two,” she said, “to create opportunities and really get to the root of the problem in Central American countries that is fueling migration.”

This came just two days after the first charter flight out of New Mexico returned 17 Honduran women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, to San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world.

The White House said on Tuesday, after that flight, they are trying to send a message that “they will not be welcomed to this country.”