"According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras is ranked No. 1 in the world for homicides and El Salvador and Guatemala are not too far behind. Not even African nations come as close to the murder rates that our neighbors to the south are suffering right now.

The primary reasons for the high murder rate is that the Northern Triangle has become the staging area for 60 percent of cocaine smuggled via Mexico to the United States, according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ publication Organized Crime in Central America. Mexican cartels with local gangs are currently fighting a war for the lucrative trade routes."